Question Of Corporal Punishment

In New Guinea

Letter to the Editor.

I READ with a mixture of pity and amusement the outpourings of “Veri” from New Ireland and “Duk Duk” of Rabaul (comrades in dis tress) in the December issue of your valued jour nal. Both are at least deserving of a little sym pathy, but unfortunately of a great deal of correction.

Our friend “Veri” was evidently quite oblivious while writing the latter portion of his letter of his opening remarks; or at least he quite forgot to read over his journalistic product, otherwise he could not have failed to observe the glaring inconsistency that one part bears to the other. (1) “Veri” begins by informing us that ten white men have been charged with killing natives, and countless others have been imprisoned and fined for assaults on natives. (He might have added that only a fraction of the cases ever reach a court.) (2) The cause of all this trouble, accord ing to “Veri,” is the lax system of governing the natives. (Truly a scathing indictment on Austra lian intelligence and administrative ability.) (3) The remedy, in “Veri’s” opinion, is the re-introduction of the German system obtaining here over twenty years ago, of giving a settler legal power to punish natives. (This is alleged to be the panacea for all evils.) Unfortunately, however, for “Veri’s” case, he states further down in his letter (and I do not for a moment dispute the veracity of the admis sion) that the natives are receiving far more punishment now than in the German time.

If the Germans used corporal punishment on natives and secured by means of it such happy results —contentment, docility, obedience, respect for authority and, most important of all, more work-one would naturally conclude that as the quantity of corporal punishment has been greatly increased (and it certainly has) the bulk of happy results would have increased, at least in equal ratio. Yet, according to “Veri,” the identical op posite is the case.

It would be very difficult to reconcile the evi dence placed before the court in the killing cases with the claim that those who committed the heinous crimes were men of such high moral and social virtues as “Veri” would like us to believe.

Facts are stubborn things and very unyielding. An honest survey of the court records would upset many fantastic calculations. If those few who have been convicted and punished are types of cultured Australians with honourable records, I can quite understand the notice posted up outside at least two South African hotels after the Boer War, “No admittance for dogs, devils or Aus tralians.”

Whether the Germans were right or wrong in giving settlers legal power to punish natives (and I do not agree with it), we are not concerned now. At least the German Administration gave legal status to the practice, so the poor native knew at least he was receiving legalised cruelty.

Now the native’s back is bruised, but a far greater injury is inflicted on his mind. The natives here to-day are naturally far more men tally developed than their primitive ancestors twenty or thirty years ago. The natives know through officials, luluais and the village schools, that the white man is forbidden in law to inflict corporal punishment; and, still, according to “Veri,” the natives are receiving more punish ment than ever before. No wonder there exists resentment, bitterness and disrespect for law. If we wish to teach the natives respect for law and reverence for authority we should first set the example.

Take, for instance, a case that came before the cdurt from that perpetually unhappy region, the Kavieng District. Natives were charged with attempting to kill their master. Yet evidence wrung from that employer in the court showed that natives were forced to work on Sundays, and

were corporally punished by the master, as well as given bitter medicines to drink for punishment Evidence was placed before the court showing that the oppressed people made an attempt to go away a long distance and report the matter to the District Officer, and were brought back and punished. The employer concerned knew the law as clearly as he knows the alphabet, yet the cruel practices were continued. The facts of the case were faithfully presented to the court by the Crown Law Officer; the Chief Judge, in summing up, strongly pointed out that each of the cruelties used were illegal. Yet the offender was neither fined nor imprisoned. Why? No wonder the oppresssed people are so often driven to seek re dress by violence, after having exhausted all rea sonable means!

In my opinion the “White Australia Policy," stretched and strained until it has become an instrument of oppression in the hands of a number of unscrupulous whites, is the cause of 95 per cent, of the troubles between Europeans and natives to-day. People come here from Australia and make no attempt to conceal the fact that they loathe the native and, in fact, everything coloured.

They cannot dispense with the native’s service, but this only accentuates their ingrained aversion of him. For such people the native is and ever will be a beast of burden, and is entitled to no better treatment.

When Mr. McKenna (Permanent Head of the Queensland Education Department) was invited here to report and advise on the education of the natives, he wrote, inter alia, “That one of the

strangest things in this strange land was the attitude of the whites towards the natives. Any suggestion that a little kindness would produce better results meets with derision and contempt.”

Mr. McKenna was a keen and intelligent observer and in my opinion he was not long in noting the cause at the root of nearly all the trouble here to-day.

All colonial administrations have found it necessary to check and restrain the exploitation tendencies of their colonists. Australia, in dealing with her own aboriginals, has a black and bloody history to live down. Arsenic was deliberately put in bags of sugar to poison off the people; they were shot down most cruelly by early settlers; and these facts are known even to school children in English schools to-day. In my opin ion, if one thing more than another will prompt Geneva, Canberra or the local Administration to tighten up and more rigorously apply laws for the protection of the native races, it will be the perpetual hate now at white heat, seeking to legalise barbarity in the Territory. If the German system applied to primitive people was reintro duced even for a month among the at their present stage of development, those whites now clamouring for it would be the first to urge its repeal to save their own lives.

“Duk Duk’s” lament is that there is no jury system in the Territory. Yet if his letter is a faithful reflex of his mind it is evident that zeal for the execution of justice was not his primary motive in writing. The introduction of the jury system in this Territory now would certainly benefit and unjustly protect the white and even in many cases give him a licence to violate law.

It would absolutely rob the native of the pro tection of law.

If the jury system, on account of the many loopholes it offers to injustice, is on trial in so many places, what hope is there it would ever succeed here? The system has been caustically criticised in Victoria and N.S. Wales many times by those whose legal training gives value to their

opinions. Tasmania is reported to have dispensed with it.

In a country like New Guinea with its sparse and scattered European population and its large native and coloured population, where the native is condemned and despised, I honestly believe that the jury system would mean the collapse of jus tice in the Territory. The work of Police, District Officers, Crown Law Office and Judges would be at the mercy of cliques whose ingrained aversion would prejudice and blind them in any dispute or case where Black would be against White. The jury system would be an inducement for prospec tive law-breakers to act with impunity and would drive the native to seek redress by the only means left to him—violence. Twelve jurymen could never be empanelled in this Territory to re turn. a verdict of guilty against a European.

Even after the clear exposition of the barbarous details of the killing of a native, published in succeeding issues of the “Rabaul Times” recently,, potential jurymen, volatile and talkative with liquor, were holding up the culprit as an unfor tunate hero, more deserving of a V.C. than a terra of imprisonment.

If there is anything in “Duk Duk’s” case, the only sane and logical inference must be that we have a judge or judges who are corrupt, incom petent, or at least prejudiced against their own countrymen. Mr. Justice Wahliss, the Chief Judge, is a sound lawyer and a just judge, and has, moreover, a long and honourable military ser vice. He enjoys the respect and confidence of every educated person here to-day.

It is neither pleasant nor just to the living relatives of those who have been sentenced to review the details of the cases cited by “Duk Duk,” in support of his plea for a jury system.

The reports can be read by any interested party.

How any sincere critic could hope to succeed by pointing to such cases is beyond comprehension.

If they are types of “cultured” white men with honourable records, Australian culture must be of an extremely inferior quality. Perhaps this ex plains why the natives are so slow at absorbing it.

“Duk Duk,” I observe, has quoted approvingly the Crown Law Officer for the Territory (Mr. G.

Hogan) as stating that native evidence was worthless and unreliable. Only last week the Crown Law Officer stated in the Legislative Coun cil that he did not cause a letter to be written stating that he fully realised that native evidence was worthless and unreliable. I know that the Crown Law Officer has repeatedly stated in court the direct opposite to “Duk Duk’s” contention.

What the Crown Law Officer probably did say was that in a particular case the native’s evidence was worthless and unreliable.

I would remind “Duk Duk” that a person who sets out to prove too much usually ends by prov ing nothing. The logical, sane and traditional way is to collect and survey the evidence first and then draw conclusions.

I am, etc.,

Lover Of Justice.

Rabaul, N.G., 1st February, 1935.

Mr. David R. McNicoll, son of the Ad ministrator of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, sailed by the Montoro for Rabaul on February 20. After spending several weeks with his parents at Nama nula, New Britain, he made a trip across to New Ireland in the Administration schooner Thetis. Mr. McNicoll, who is a journalist, will return to his duties on the editorial staff of the “Sydney Morn ing Herald” in April next.