Women

Silly White

The Harm They Do In Melanesia

“I SEE that they have provided the death penalty for Solomon Islands na tives who attack white women,” said a recent visitor from the Solomon Islands.

“No doubt this is a very necessary thing. But it is just as well to remind those interested that the responsibility does not rest wholly on the natives.

“Europeans have an obligation, too.

White women of an irresponsible class come to the Islands with growing fre quency, and they seem to have no idea of how to behave themselves properly In the presence of natives. Some of the things that have happened in the Solo mon Islands since we began to have visitors from the so-called cruising ships have disgusted the older residents.

“Women of a very common class come ashore from those ‘luxury liners’ and be have themselves in a deplorable fashion.

They are familiar with the natives —I have myself seen some of them standing with their arms around the necks of na tive men, while their boy friends photo graphed them. Not long ago a Jewess was carried from Tulagi onto the steamer in a drunken condition, with all the na tives thereabout looking on and laughing.

Not so long ago several women from the yacht of a visiting millionaire went ashore to bathe on a beach in the Solomon Is lands. They wore only V’s and brassieres —and their behaviour was not of a kind calculated to inspire respect for white women in the minds of the natives who were looking on.

“The administration authorities should have power to deal very sternly with this kind of thing.

“Steps also should be taken to prevent people bringing these Melanesian natives to Sydney whether as servants or on any other pretext. Almost invariably, when they come to Sydney, they make contact with low-class women of the streets, and then they return to the Islands, not only with wrong ideas in their own minds, but ready to put wrong ideas into the minds of other natives.”