Editorial Note

IF Judge Wanliss had directed his “scathing” remarks against the Administration, rather than against this unfortunate victim of an ill balanced system, he might have achieved some good.

Incidentally, is it not time that some official notice was taken of certain sentences im posed by the Chief Judge of this jury-less Supreme Court of New Guinea. There is a growing impres sion that they have a quality that is not consistent with the decisions of British judges elsewhere.

British justice, usually, is coloured by the element of mercy. Five years’ gaol for an act of incen diarism committed in the peculiar circumstances disclosed, seems to be an excessive sentence.

Attention has been directed again and again to the stupidity of a native administrative policy which permits teachers of the Christian religion to go out among primitive natives in New Guinea and there fight bitterly with each other for the privilege of saving those primitives’ souls.

Within the last two or three years, on several occasions we directed attention to the jealous competition reported among missionaries for the apparent advantage of getting in first among the newly-discovered tribes of the Ramu-Purari region; and we said then that if the missionary bodies could not see that those natives were better left alone in their age-old condition of primitive free dom and comparative happiness, the missionaries might at least appreciate the fact that sectarian fighting was undesirable.

We suggested that if the natives had to be Christianised, it was more important that they should be Christianised with a respect for the white man’s religion, rather than that they should be presented with a choice of creeds, with all the deplorable circumstances of sectarian jealousy and strife. Commentators on those occasions repeatedly made the plea that the Administration should parcel out this new territory among the different missionary bodies, so that there should be no con flict; and if that had been done—as it has been done in other territories—this unfortunate case of Father Cranssen would not have occurred.

We have no hesitation in saying that the inci dent directs attention to a condition of affairs in the New Guinea missionary field which is discredit able to the Administration.

We are quite sincere in declaring our unqualified admiration for the valuable work, nobility of char acter, and readiness for personal sacrifice found among missionaries in the Pacific; but we can say, with equal fervour, that there is nothing in the mission field more detestable than sectarianism.

The great majority of mission bodies and of mis sionaries are not sectarian fanatics; but there is a poisonous minority who not only distribute their Christianity as if they were distributing a com petitive brand of tea, but they also try to set their native converts against the converts of other denominations. Such men should be kicked out of the Islands, as a menace to good government, and a negation of all that is best in Christian teaching.

Mr. A. R. Dick, who graduated in Agri culture at Melbourne University in March, will leave for the Solomon Islands in June to become soil analyst for an Australian firm which is interested in copra and by-products from the coconut palm.