"Olo0Ists"

A Broadside At The

Letter to the Editor.

WHILE we quiver with the sympathy of a broad and deep understanding, we fear that your correspondent “Edu cationalist of 20 Years’ Standing” (June P.1.M.) has navigated, as yet, only the shallow waters of his sea of trouble and will have need to gird his loins against the tribulations of the wrath to come; for the anthropologists are advancing in serried ranks on the defenceless shores of New Guinea.

We know what is in store for the in digenes of Melanesia. Our long-suffering natives have been for years pinned as specimens on laboratory tables. Their heads have been clamped in calipers; their noses tweaked and measured; the locks of their hair scissored; the inti mate relationships of their family life peered into; and the skulls and bones of their ancestors ravished from burial caves.

Distressing as this may be, it is, never theless, mild compared with the deso lation following a visitation of ornitho logists. The anthropologist spares the victim’s life; the ornithologist leaves in his wake a soundless, melancholy wilder ness.

One of these gentry went through Poly nesia after the manner of the Black Death through Europe during the Middle Ages. He had with him a pack of hench men who were crack shots. Together they slaughtered thousands of the already decimated native birds. Many species never recovered from ’ his massacre and are now extinct.

Neither the ornithologist nor the mus eum which sent him gained any new knowledge through this indiscriminate devastation. All of the birds had been described, pictured, and given Latin names generations before.

Why is this sort of thing permitted?

W© presume, because to the mentality of the modern world the term “Science” has become the omniflc word.

Any ukase sealed with the rubber stamp of “Science” (be it pseudo or gen uine) has the same paralysing effect on the intellect as did a Papal Bull in the 10th century or an Imperial Edict of Augustus Caesar in the days of the Roman Empire: officials, patricians, burg hers, and commoners tremble and obey!

I am, etc.,

Pro Bono Publico

Raiatea, Fr. Oceania.

August 4, 1937.