Cultured Boys From Tongan

College Tour Australia In Choir.

A CHOIR of sixteen boys, singing beau tifully, is providing unusual enter tainment for Australian audiences.

The season opened at the Lyceum Theatre, Sydney, on December 4, when the choir sang to a large audience. The boys, who are from the Tubou College, Tonga, were brought to Sydney by the Rev. A. H. Wood and, as a concert party, will tour the Commonwealth. All are of perfect physique and, with their cultivated voices and attractive appear ance, they are a striking advertisement for the Kingdom of Tonga.

At the Lyceum performance, the Rev.

A. H. Wood said that the boys were a complete denial of the statement of critics that natives were debased by Christian missions. He pointed out that the missions were the “shock absorbers” when primitive peoples came into con tact with civilisation.

One of the party, David Mauna, ad dressed the audience in good, if lab oured, English. After becoming used to the microphone (the speech was broad cast) he became quite eloquent and spoke of the pleasure it gave him and his comrades to see the place from whence Christianity came to the Islands and of their interest in the things made by man. Describing the difficulties of the early missionaries and the dangers they met, he told how one of them was thrown into the sea by natives to see if his God would protect him from the sharks Mr. Wood explained that that was the first occasion on which Mauna had spoken to a white audience. He de scribed the Tongans’ pride of race and invited critics of the missions’ methods to interview any of the members of the choir. They would find them intensely interested in the history of their race, proud of their native traditions, yet practising modern ideas of hygiene and sanitation.

The choir leaves for Tasmania on January 4. Thence it will proceed to Victoria, South Australia and Queens land. It will leave Sydney for Tonga on April 29.

With the choir is Henry Tahai, who holds the mile and weight putt cham

pionships of the Tubou College. His in terest in cricket is strengthened by the fact that he wants to take back a few hints to Tonga, so he is spending as much time as possible at the Cricket Ground. Another boy, Lubeti Finau, who won a Tongan Government scholarship tenable at Newington College, is the son of one of the best cricketers Newington has turned out, Dave Finau.

Princess Fusibala, half-sister to Queen Salote of Tonga, accompanies the boys.