Papuan Patrols.

Splendid Work of Loyal Men Gets Scant Praise.

From Our Own Correspondent.

Pt. Moresby, May 24.

THE position of settlers in Papua to-day is analogous to that of the colony itself.

The long established settlers have done good work against all manner of obstacles; they are still fighting, and no success has rewarded their con sistent, hard and honest effort.

Similarly, the Government has had to work against all sorts of limitations, shortage of men and money, and little appreciation —or at least no under standing—of the way it has triumphed over the innumerable difficulties of the country. Certainly the Government has had little reward for what it has done and little credit outside the Territory.

Few people read the Annual Reports, and even those who do do not realise the great number of enormously diffi cult patrols that have been carried out with supreme success and with a minimum of theatrical display within the last fifteen years.

The officers who have led these patrols have been entirely trained from the beginning by the Administration.

They had no grounding whatever, or experience to fall back upon except those of former patrols. Admitted that there have been British army officers in the service at some time or other who have done as splendid work as the trained men of the Administration; but they do not stand out above the others.

The Administration training has been proved to be as efficient as that of the army, for the purpose of patrolling in Papua.

It may be claimed that Papua is an easier country to control to-day, and that the initial work is completed, but this is not a view that will be held by anyone with a knowledge of Papuan conditions, and it is not fair to belittle the work of the patrol officers in Papua as compared with that done by officers in the Mandated Territory; as is the general tendency in Australia.

Evidence that the patrol officers of Papua are at least as efficient as their confreres across the border is pro vided by the very successful expedition of Mr. Humphries in 1917 from Nepa, on the Lakekamu goldfield, across the main range to the N.E. Coast on the other side of New Guinea. The moun tainous nature of the country drove him north into what is now the Man dated Territory, among tribes who had never been visited before. With these he had no difficulty at all. The world famous patrol of Messrs. Karius and Champion in 1928, when they dis covered the source of the Fly and Sepik Rivers, crossed over the main Range into the Mandated Territory, and down to the Coast: and the patrol in 1930 up the Jiveri River in Papua, over the Range to Wau in New Guinea by Patrol Officer Hides, without bloodshed or loss of life, are also triumphs of exploration.

These patrols travelled through un explored and extremely difficult dis

tricts of the Mandated Territory after arduous trips through Papua itself, which had exhausted their carriers and dangerously depleted their stores.

The comparison becomes the more striking when it is remembered that Patrol Officer Hides recently passed without bloodshed and without any serious show of opposition, through the very districts of the Mandated Ter ritory in which patrol after patrol is attacked, with loss of life on both sides.

Great attention and praise has been given lately in Australia to the work of the men in the Mandated Territory, and there has been some dissatisfac tion in Papua, that the splendid work that has been done is still being done by the officers of the service in the remote districts of Papua should be overshadowed by the more advertised exploits of their neighbours.

EDITORIAL NOTE. —The publicity received in recent years by patrols in the Mandated Terri tory is largely the result of the murders of prospectors and the subsequent activities of patrols in arresting the culprits. As Papua has not been the scene of attacks on Europeans recently, Papuan patrols have no reports such as are worked up into blood-curdling “cannibal” stories by scarehead Australian newspapers. It is evidently a case of “no news is good news” as far as Papuan patrols are concerned. New Guinea at present is on the crest of the wave of publicity which was expected following the return of the journalists who accompanied Major the Hon. C. W. O. Marr, whose recent tour of the Mandated Territory and Papua also tilled, and is tilling, many columns of the Australian press. It is all good publicity, however, and if it has done nothing else, it has at least shown many Australians that the Commonwealth has colonies in the tropics.