The Journalistic Handsprings of a Church Editor

Church Editor

By R. W. Robson.

SENSATION-mongering —the deliberate manufacture of scares and scare heads —seems to have become part of our established journalistic procedure; with th© result that very much that appears in some newspapers nowadays, is not ac cepted literally by the cautious reader.

It is surprising, however, to find a re ligious newspaper indulging in journal istic handsprings—looks as if the spirit of modernism is invading some of our most venerable institutions.

In the October issue, I published an article about developments in Central New Guinea. I said that I should like to see this magnificent country kept for the native peoples who inhabit it; but that it was too rich, too occupiable, to encourage the hope that it might remain as a preserve for primitive man. In view of that, I discussed the possibilities of this new ‘‘Anglo-Australian Dominion”; and, figuratively, I waved the flag and shouted ‘‘Advance Australia!”

Judge of my amazement then, to dis cover a quite savage attack on me in the “Church Times,” which appears to repre sent the Church of England in Australia.

The ingenious editor picks one sentence out of my article —namely: “I am the last man to advocate the disturbance of an established happy

indigenous community—I am most

heartily in sympathy with those who urge that the newly - discovered Benna-Benna and Wahgis be left alone, free from trading, and educa tion, and missionaries and all the other curses of ‘civilisation.’ ”

And, having completely divorced this sentence from the qualifying context, he proceeds to tell the Church of England that I have bracketed trading, education and missions for the purpose of “a group insult,” and that I have “scorned the noblest work of Christians.” He goes on to say that Christian missionaries must follow in the track of the pioneers and colonists, to save the native from vice

and disease and the inevitable results of exploitation. Which is precisely what I have said myself, in this journal, on a score of occasions.

Then the editor quotes half a dozen most excellent people in support of his contention that missionaries do a noble work. And he heads his article “A Great Christian Work Derided—An Attack on Missions.” Bless his heart!

Just in case some of my many mis

sionary friends in the Pacific may read the “Church Times” headings, and won der if I suddenly have gone mad, I will quote the essential parts of the letter I sent, in reply, to the editor of the “Church Times”: “May I say that I think it is grossly unfair that you should seize upon a sen tence from a carefully-reasoned article; divorce it entirely from its context, and then direct against me a charge that I am ‘insulting the mission bodies.’ I have never insulted a missionary organisation,

and I count many South Seas mission aries amongst my best friends.

“This is what I wrote and published more than two years ago, and it still re presents, without any alteration, my per sonal view on the much debated mission ary question.

“ ‘We must do honour to the great body of missionaries. They saved and pro tected these simple people of the coral islands, when trade and commerce merely exploited and debauched them. They gave the natives hospitals and schools, when the majority of other white men thought only of profits and gratification of the baser appetites. They have co operated in invaluable fashion with the various Islands’ Administrations in es tablishing well-governed, educated native communities in the Pacific, where pre viously there were social conditions which could bring nothing but shame upon the white race.

“ ‘If there had been no European penetration of the Pacific, it might have been better that the natives —or at least the Melanesian section of them —were left alone, to live in their natural conditions.

without the white man’s always fatal interference. But, since that was impos sible, the European nations were fortu nate that so many able and genuinely pious men were to be found, prepared to devote themselves to a life of poverty and isolation, so that the balance might be fairly held between the invading and the indigenous races, and justice done in the name of our common humanity.’

“But, with equal force, I advance the view that it is not a desirable thing that missionaries should go among primitive peoples who are untouched by European ‘civilisation,’ unless it can be shown that such people are in a condition of physical or moral degeneracy. The tribes in the newly-discovered region of Central New Guinea appear to be a high-spirited, in telligent and healthy people, who are not necessarily treacherous towards whites.

Sooner or later, I suppose, this country will be penetrated by Europeans in suffi cient numbers to break down the ancient tribal customs and standards of the natives; and so will begin that seemingly inevitable process of degeneracy that I have seen in a score of other countries.

It is time enough for the European mis sionary to enter when the old tribal cul ture is collapsing; but, until then, it surely is not too much to ask that the tribes be left alone. A missionary, working upon a simple, trusting people, can do just as much harm, from the anthropological standpoint, as the hard-boiled trader.

“I know, of course, what you would reply—that there is a duty laid upon all true Christians to carry their teachings into the uttermost ends of the earth. I do not accept that at all —so there is no use in our arguing. But that does not lessen my resentment that you should have charged me, both actually and by implication, with holding our missionaries up to insult and contempt. Anyone who has read my journal regularly knows there is no justification for such a state ment. Anyone, indeed, who read the whole of the article you have quoted from, instead of the one isolated sentence, would admit that there was no justifica tion for the scare headings employed by the ‘Church Times’.”