Pacific Administrators

COMPLETELY successful administrators of Pacific territories are born: they cannot be shaped to order. The nature of the responsibility placed upon them makes it necessary that they shall be dictators; other considerations make it equally necessary that they shall hide the strong hand of the autocrat in the velvet glove of the diplomat. They must have wide vision, and build for the future according to a pre-conceived and co-ordinated plan, and they must not be deflected from their continuing purpose. Yet ruthlessness will defeat their ends; so they must be men with a broad and tolerant understanding of human nature. They must be naturally austere men; for they live always in that “fierce light that beats upon a throne.” And if they are followers of the flesh-pots, their appetites may be counted against them as weaknesses, and they may not enjoy, as they should, the confidence and respect of the people they govern.

Such men are hard to find. Among a thousand who eagerly seek the privileges and perquisites of administratorship,

there probably is not one who can measure up to the standard required.

It is a remarkable thing, therefore, that the Pacific territories generally have been so well governed. Much more often than not, these regions—French as well as British—have been placed in the care of men of most conspicuous ability, who have given to a difficult, discouraging, and often thankless job a lifetime of devoted effort. Usually, they have been men whose personal influence, no less than their administrative acts, has lifted the prestige of the flag they served, and assisted definitely in the advancement of human progress—often in circumstances where they might have been excused if they had exercised purely negative qualities, and “taken it easy.” No man, who knows the Islands, blames officials who succumb to that insidious “tropicitis.”

Australia, in this respect, has been surprisingly well served surprising, because Australia notoriously is governed by a class of mediocre office-seekers, who are the natural product of a degenerate democracy, and who could not be ex-

pected to display much wisdom in their choice of administrators. Nevertheless, such notable men as Sir William Mac- Gregor, Sir Hubert Murray and General T. Griffiths have governed Pacific territories under the aegis of Australia.

Parenthetically, it is impossible to escape the logical, distressing thought that, if only her vicious political system could be reformed, Australia might have this class of man for her own government, instead of for that of her dependent territories.

A new appointment has been made to the New Guinea administratorship.

Everyone who is jealous of Australia’s fine record in Pacific administration— and, not least of them, the officers of the splendid public service corps which Australia has built up in New Guinea since 1920 —will use his influence to smooth the path of the man who is taking up this difficult job, with its embarrassing Imperial obligations.

Many people have expressed regret that the Federal Government, in making the New Guinea appointment, overlooked the claims of certain outstanding figures of the Papuan service. The Lieutenant-

Governor of Papua, Sir Hubert Murray, stands unchallenged as the greatest Pacific administrator this century yet has produced; and, without doubt, his per sonal influence has done much to train the vision and mould the characters of the men associated with him in that ser vice. There are at least three of them who are regarded as competent to assume the major responsibilities of administra

torship.

Incidentally, the fact that the Ad ministrator of Norfolk Island, Captain Pinney, is a man trained and qualified in the Sir Hubert Murray school, should have carried some weight with Australian newspapers recently, when Norfolk Island affairs were under the limelight.

But the man who attacked Captain Pin ney was given the freedom of certain newspaper offices, and allowed to wag an agitated, irresponsible jaw; and not one word was said by the newspapers in defence of the silent officer who has to carry all the obligations of administra torship, and whose private and public record is without a blemish.

Too much praise cannot be given, in this general review, to the men who have

guided Fiji and Western Samoa through

these recent difficult years. Sir Murchi son Fletcher has had a certain amount of relief in the flourishing condition of the Fiji sugar industry; but the burden he has had to assume, in supervising the public finance of the Solomons, Gilbert and Ellice, Tonga and New Hebrides Groups, since the collapse of the copra market, ccn only be guessed at by we unenvious outsiders. History should have something very flattering to say of this particular High Commissioner.

To the economic worries of the de pression period were added acute poli tical troubles, to provide a really fright ful job for the New Zealand Administra tor of Samoa, General Hart. There were a number of occasions, during the past three years, when a less able and less patient man inevitably and easily would have caused bloodshed in Samoa, em broiled Great Britain with the League of Nations, and discredited New Zealand.

Instead, General Hart has brought Sa moa to a condition of quiescence and com parative content —a thing that seemed impossible a couple of years ago. He not only has done his work in a most praise worth}' manner: he also has done much to wipe out the memory of New Zealand’s blunders in Samoa between 1924 and 1930.