Polynesians And
p. 15 · Read in the full issue
Europeans.
Many Unions are Quite Happy.
(By “Na Vodre”).
READING over my back numbers of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” I was much interested in two articles, written from opposite points of view.
The first was entitled “Polynesia,’ and it appeared in the issue of April, 1932. The second article which at tracted my attention was featured in your issue of July, 1932, under the title of “Why White Men Go Native.”
The first article, written with deep feeling, showed a true picture of the process by which white men gradually come under the spell of the Islands.
The process is seemingly glorious in its gradual awakening from the servi tude of civilisation to the unfettered freedom of lagoon, beach, and sky.
Now, however, let us turn to the second of these two articles. “Here,” says the sceptic, “we have the other side, minus the glamour.” But have we?
Allow me to point out that it is an impossibility for the writer of the second paragraph to compare, in any way, the position with the writer of the previous article. I entirely agree with all that he says, knowing the far western side of the Pacific fairly well, in the Solomons or New Hebrides the horrible picture of slow degradation is doubtlessly true to life. Yet if applied to the Eastern or Central Groups of Islands in the Pacific Ocean it becomes a slur on a noble people.
The Polynesian races are definitely from the same root stock as ourselves.
There exists no gulf between us so wide that it can not be bridged by sympathy, tolerance, and love. Some of the most happy marriages I have ever known have been between people of Polynesian, or part Polynesian blood, and Euro peans. Many educated and refined men of my acquaintance are married to these gentle people, and have never regretted it.
No thinking man would attempt to draw analogies between the barbarians of Northern Africa and the highly civi lised people of England. Why, then, attempt to lay down a hard and fast rule for white men in the Pacific on the grounds of geographical proximity, dis regarding racial differences, as between Polynesian and Negroid?
EDITORIAL NOTE. —The above writer appar ently did not see an article in our issue of September, 1932 (page 7), in which the views he expressed in regard to European-Polynesian marriages were very strongly set forth by an other contributor. Experience has shown that, while white will not mix with black (Melanesian), there can be very happy marriages between Europeans and Polynesians.