Missionaries, Etc.

NOT long ago one of the most able missionaries in the South Seas, in a private letter to the editor, said this: “Sometimes I feel tempted to write and thank you for your fairness to Christian Missions, and sometimes I feel that I should like to wring your neck for your unfairness!"

Therein we have the key to the whole wearisome controversy between mission aries and traders, missionaries and an thropologists, and so on. It all depends upon the point of view. The argument goes on and on, and no one is satisfied, or convinced, or happy. The trader who has to compete with a mission store in the next bay, or the planter who finds that labour-line discipline has been destroyed by over-enthusiastic attention to the souls of the labourers, calls male dictions upon the church militant. But the official who sees a missionary’s good work in the fields of education and medi cine, or the recruiter whose schooner has been towed off a lee shore by a crew from the ever-helpful mission station, will be ready with words of praise and gratitude.

So much depends, too, upon the kind of man the missionary is. This writer

asked a mission organiser: “What is your major difficulty? Finance?” “No!” was the emphatic reply. “It is personnel —the difficulty of persuading many ex cellent people that religious fervour alone does not qualify one for work in the foreign mission field.” “And next to that?” “The difficulty of explaining away the white man to the native,” he answered. Think that out.

We have not published much, in recent months, about what non-mission folk think of missionaries—it seemed to be leading nowhere. But we have received very many letters on the subject, some presenting cogent and striking argu ments. Those that are worthy of notice deal mostly with the economic aspect — with the impropriety of permitting mis sions, fortified by subsidies and assisted by abundant, cheap, native labour, to engage in trading, planting, building, etc., in competition with traders and tradesmen. The mission bodies—with out exception, we think—have now ac cepted the principle that mission activi ties must not enter the competitive field of trade and commerce. But the inter

pretation of that rule has caused friction and high feeling, in a few places.

There are few wealthy mission bodies.

As a rule, mission work is carried out, often under bitter financial stress, by voluntary effort and small donations of money. The economic ideal for which they naturally all strive is a self-support ing mission station, where the work is not cramped by financial considerations, and where appeals to the mother church for funds can be avoided. The missionaries, in such circumstances, eagerly engage in any proper enterprise which will provide them with greater facilities for work, or will help in feeding their station: copra production, coffee-growing, boat-build ing, even gold-digging and trochus fishing, have been regarded by them as legitimate activities. Is it to be won dered at that the missionaries become impatient and querulous when told that they must abandon these enterprises, and correspondingly limit their work of sal vation and education, in order that other Europeans may engage in the same ac tivities for profit? On the other hand, why should the missions be allowed to deprive white men of a means of live lihood? It all depends on the point of view.

The kernel of the argument is the value of the work being done by the mis sions. We may ignore, for the moment, the age-old controversy of whether Pa cific islanders can be, or should be, “Christianised.” But upon the invading Europeans there does lie the responsi bility of protecting the indigenous peoples, and of combatting the evils which attend the impact of Western civilisation. The Christian churches have undertaken that duty, with its in finite ramifications. The missionaries have come into the Pacific as a kind of buffer, between a ruthless commercialism, on the one hand, and a helpless, stone age people, on the other. The Pacific administrations, for their part, must pro tect the missionaries.

There have been some fools of mis sionaries, just as there have been some priceless scoundrels of traders. But the quaint “Bible-banger,” who made the Polynesians wear trousers, belongs to another age, and so does the gin-soaked rascal whose hobby was the enslavement and murder of natives. Our inquiries, made all over the Pacific, suggest that the majority of missionaries, nowadays, are broad-minded, manly fellows; that traders generally play the game in a thoroughly decent fashion; and that there is a real friendship between the two classes, based on mutual esteem.

And that, gentlemen, is why we have not published your numerous letters.

There are a few unpleasant missionaries, and traders, still about; but why spoil a really creditable picture by devoting unnecessary attention to a very few indi viduals, of fast-disappearing types?