Another Colonizing “Scheme”
p. 42 · Read in the full issue
A South Sea Utopia
EVERY now and again, with the same regular monotony as the high-flown reassuring phrases of company promoters, comes an announcement that a group of nature lovers intend to hie themselves to some far-away South Sea isle and there live a life of languorous ease, amid blue skies and waving palm trees.
The latest such scheme to come under our notice has just been announced by Mr. Maurice Allard, President of Nature’s Recreative Association. The story, pub lished in an American paper, is as fol lows: “Utopia, a languorous paradise on a tropical isle in the South Seas, is beck oning—to anybody who can pay the en trance fee of 1000 dollars (£200).
“As soon as we have raised sufficient funds to purchase the island, and a small steamer to take us there, said Mr. Allard, at least 160 San Francisco nudists will start on a one-way trip to Paradise.
“The retreat will be on the island of Vanna Vanna, in the Gambier Group, 250 miles south from Tahiti, where coconuts, mangroves, guava, pineapples and bread fruit grow while you look at them.
“Mr. Allard has it all worked out.
Money? he said, we won’t need any Clothes? We won’t need any. There’ll be no butcher’s bill. Fish, crabs, turtles, and shrimps abound.
“Even the prospective little nudists are being provided for, because all who enter this ultra-nudist island must be married.
Inter-marriage between their descendants is planned, so that ultimately a race of super-nudists will grow up.
“The islanders will need to work only four hours a day, explained Mr. Allard, and in their spare moments they will be able to work up a mother-of-pearl trade, and get a little pocket money.
“He did not explain, however, what they will do for pockets.”
That is the scheme, differing little from its many predecessors. Invariably, how ever, little is achieved, save, perhaps, pro viding some sympathetic reporter with front-page “copy,” which in turn brings a breath of romance to hundreds of weary typistes and a longing for adventure to their flat-chested, would-be lotus-eating boy friends.
That many people view these schemes with faithful sincerity lends truth to the glib Mr. Barnum’s interesting theory.