Editorial Note

Our correspondent, calmly and very reasonably, deals with two aspects of his subject—namely, the question of forcing Christianity upon natives who are not immediately in contact with civilisation, and the question of how best to train and educate natives who are more or less “Europeanised.”

So far as the second matter is concerned, we are quite in accord and sympathy with the Missionary.

But, with all respect to the Missionary’s calling and the Missionary’s point of view, we join issue with Mr. Chatterton concerning the desirableness of compelling completely primitive native peoples to accept the white man’s religion. This writer has been many times among native coloured peoples, some semi-civilised and some who had rarely seen white men, in the Pacific else where; and he has never yet seen any convincing reason why native communities should be disturbed, simply in order to allow Missionaries to work among them. Among the primitive peoples, as Mr.

Chatterton says, one may find sorcery, infanti cide, cannibalism, and other horrors; but are these things any more horrible, in the sight of God,

than the child-slavery, habitual drunkenness, sys tematic abortion, and legalised enslavement of helpless people by trusts and combines, which are characteristic of our so-called advanced Christian civilisation.

It is all a question of standards. In Mr. Chat terton’s view, the gentleman resident on the Ramtu plateau may be an ignorant and evil-smelling savage; but the Ramu gentleman may think much the same about Mr. Chatterton. And we may find, in the writings of the Apostles, complete justi fication for saying that the New Guinea native is just as much entitled to his opinion of Europeans as the latter are to their opinions of natives.

Christian civilisation usually does far more harm than good to non-European peoples. More often than not, “coloured” communities have dwindled in numbers, and frequently have disappeared alto gether, under the impact of Caucasian culture.

Under their own age-old culture, they are happy and healthy. We have no more right to force our social and moral standards upon them than they have to compel us to accept their practices and ideals.

But, inevitably, “Europeanism” is conquering the whole world; and as each native community col lapses before our implacable advance, and abandons its culture and accepts ours, there is work for the Christian Missionary—in full measure and flowing over. If it were not for the magnificent, self-sacrificing work of the Christian Mission aries, the record of the advance of European civi lisation over Africa, Asia, America, and the South.

Seas would be the most ghastly thing in the his tory of mankind.