Fiji's Governor

Unexpected Transfer to Jamaica

THERE was considerable surprise when it was announced on June 15 that Sir Arthur Richards, Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, had been appointed Governor of Jamaica. Sir Arthur Richards was ap pointed to his present position at the end of 1936, and had really only settled down to his new duties, which he was discharging with every indication o+ strength, courage and vision.

Probably it was the display of those qualities which caused his early transfer.

There have been serious riots recently in

Jamaica, and it may be that the trouble is due to administrative weakness there.

One may suppose that the British Colonial Office looked about for some man of outstanding ability for appoint ment to a difficult situation, and Sir Arthur Richards evidently was the type of man required. It may be Jamaica’s gain—but definitely it is Fiji’s loss.

The men who are administering the outlying territories under the command of the High Commissioner for the Wes tern Pacific will regret this development.

As a rule, the Solomons, the Gilbert and Ellice Colony, Tonga and the New Hebrides complain bitterly that Suva, more often than not, ignores their existence and pigeonholes their variour representations; but, in Sir Arthur Richards, they had found a man who gave as much attention to the outlying territories as to Fiji itself.

Mr. V. Hunt has been appointed as sayed to Cuthbert’s Misima Gold Mines, Misima Is., Papua. Mr. Hunt was formerly connected with the Triton Gold Mining Co., Western Australia.

Dr. Peter H. Buck, director of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum at Honolulu, Hawaii, has been appointed visiting pro fessor of Polynesian ethnology to Yale University, U.S.A.

Sir Arthur Richards, with his small son, “snapped” on the liner in Sydney, in 1986, when he was en route to Suva to assume the Governorship.