Is It Stalemate In Samoa?

Administration Conciliatory but Insists on Elimination of Nelson. — Mau Sullen and Reluctant.

Commercial Interests’ Anxiety. (Written specially for “The Pacific Islands Monthly,~by Marc T. Greene, a well-known American journalist.)

APIA, July 23.

The outcome of Mr. Nelson’s return to Samoa after five years of exile and his present stay here of three months has been the sub mission to the Administration of a revised set of “demands” drawn up with his direction and advice.

To that move of the Mau the Administration has replied in a fashion that puts the immediate issue squarely up to the Samoans.

“Eliminate Nelson and we will talk to you,” General Hart told the Mau Committee yesterday, “but on no other condition.”

The situation thus remains, for the moment at least, just where it was before—and that is nowhere at all. The “demands” are a virtual reiteration of those submitted to the Administration several times before, within the past two years, but the guiding hand of Nelson in the business this time is not acceptable to New Zealand.

That being the case, the Mau and everybody else concerned are afforded food for serious thought and it takes this general line. Is Nelson, obviously determined to make his personal quarrel with New Zealand the Samoans’, doing them any real good in his leadership ? It is authoritatively stated that he has up to now spent more than £10,000 of the natives’ money in that leader ship, and if any real progress has been made towards winning their fight with the Mandatory it is not evident to the average observer.

The position of the Administra tion now is that the general con ference with the native chiefs, so long urged by them, will be granted if Nelson is eliminated from the scene, either in a directive or an influential capacity. That, in itself, is something of a conciliatory move by the government and would ap pear to declare its sincerity in the attempt to restore the so-much needed harmony here. Moreover, the intimation is clear that serious heed will be given the Mau’s re quests, although no promise, of

course, is made that all or any of them will be granted.

But the pressure upon the Administration of the traders, whose affairs are becoming confu sion worse confounded, is growing very strong indeed. None of them are concerned with Nelson’s per sonal grievances and some are not even concerned with the Mau’s, though practically all agree that colossal blunders have been made by the New Zealand Government here and that those must in some measure be atoned for.

What the traders want is har mony; and they are determined to have it. Twenty of the leaders among them last week held a serious conference with the visiting New Zealand officials, Messrs. Verschef felt and Berendsen, who have been here two months “investigating.”

It was held very privately a con siderable distance from Apia and what transpired is not for present publicity. But it is known that a unanimity of opinion was reached in respect of certain things and some of those were the forced re turn to New Zealand of sundry officials who are considered to be doing more harm than good. That is to say, the united influence of the traders aforesaid is considered sufficient to achieve their desires in such directions.

Needless to say, Mr. Nelson was not included in this conference.

But not one of the there has taken an active part in the controversy either on his behalf or against him. Each is, in effect, im partial. But all consider that some thing must be done and soon, unless economic disaster is to fall upon all, and possibly something even worse, happen.

For it is useless to represent the situation here as improved. It is, on the contrary, definitely and dis tinctly worse than ever, and that applies to the political and economic situation equally. The Mau is as strong as ever, numerically and morally, and even more sullen and resentful. The general morale of

the native populace has dropped so much since I was here two years ago as in itself to constitute a sufficient indictment of the admin istrative methods in use here during the past ten years.

The more I get to know of the Samoans the more I realize that they are exceedingly difficult people to deal with and far more so than would be the Tahitians or perhaps any others of the South Sea races.

But if New Zealand was fit to assume the Mandate in the first place she could properly be assumed to understand all that and to act accordingly. Instead, every blunder that anyone could think of has been made, commencing with the degrad ing of the high chief Tamasese and his deportation to a New Zealand jail and continuing with the depor tation of Nelson which was the best possible method of entrenching him securely as their leader in the native hearts.

But, difficult or not, these Samoan people came under New Zealand overlordship in the form of an obligation, a trust to be, adminis tered with consideration first to their welfare. No doubt at all exists that New Zealand has failed in that trust, not to say flagrantly betrayed it.

And yet there is no use in going over all that again. The errors of the past have been made and, as with us all individually and collectively, cannot be undone but only, in measure great or small, atoned for. That, as it seems to me, the present Administration here is genuinely disposed to do. But in so doing they regard this man, Mr.

Nelson, as a stumbling-block, and refuse all concessions until he is eliminated that they may treat directly with the natives.

But how the Administration, or anybody else but the natives them selves, the 90 per cent, of them who still constitute the Mau, can bring this about does not appear. And certainly the loyalty of the Samoans to Mr. Nelson seems at the moment as strong as ever.