Bishop

Humour Of A

Dr. Boddeley's Report of a Visit to New Britain

AVERY human document has just been received from the Melanesian Mission —a report of the annual visit to the Mandated Territory of New Guinea made early this year by the Bishop of Mel anesia, Rt. Rev. W. H. Baddeley, D. 5.0., M.C., M.A., whose headquarters are in the Solomon Islands. The Bishop has a discerning sense of humour and his re port is leavened here and there with de lightful little sidelights on unofficial inci dents.

Take, for example, the occasion of the Bishop's three days’ stay at Sag Sag, a little station at the far end of New Britain on Dampier Strait:— “At Sag Sag, we found plenty to do.

There were 138 candidates for confirm ation ; visits to be paid to neighbouring villages; friendly talks with the large number of natives who came in from a very big area; masses of kiddies to joke with; and, for those who wanted them, lessons in the art of slinging.

“Having seen a Sag Sag boy with a sling, I feel I know something more about young David and I don’t think Goliath was conscious of very much more after he heard the whistle of the pebble as it came whizzing through the air. I trust that the dignity of the episcopate was not lowered in the eyes of the Sag Sag folk, but I must confess that, in all my efforts, the stone fell out of the sling be hind me and after my first two or three attempts, the white staff retired en bloc to the verandah!”

A Night In The Bush

And this, of a night spent at a small outpost during a five days’ tramp through the bush of the Hak-Moewe district on the south coast of New Britain:— “Although the road was bad and the weather was filthy, we were a very happy party. Mr. Longdon met us at the junc tion of his parish and that of Mr. Castle and brought a gang of his lads with him —and his dog and his gun, the latter the guarantee of fresh meat for supper. We crossed rivers on very rickety bridges or on very primitive rafts: but it was all good fun and reminded me of holiday tramps at Home—under very different conditions.

“At Asar, where Mr. Longdon has made a start among a group of folk well worth the winning, we slept in the world’s smallest vicarage. It wasn*t a case of ‘When father says turn, we all turn’ as the old song (was it a song?) put it. There wasn’t even room to turn. But I cannot say much, for the advantage of being a Bishop (or the only Bishop in the party) is that if there is a bed going, the Bishop gets it. And I got it. But the three bits of sacking stretched over the framework sagged very badly in the middle and there were nasty gaps between for the benefit of the fiercest mosquitoes in Christendom!”

Then, again, at Au:— “Masses of small boys here —very like Kumbun station in that way. As at Kum bun they are ‘full of beans’. Mr. Thompson has many of them on his verandah in the evenings and tries to teach them to sing.

By way of variation, he taught them to sing ‘Who Killed Cock Robin’ and intro duced actions to make it all the more real.

Until , , . ! some days later, on going

through the station, he found his chorus all armed with bows and arrows-his chicken was saved; but only by his timely arrival!”

After The Eruption

Dr. Baddeley arrived at Rabaul in the Mission vessel “Southern Cross VII” just nine months after the volcanic eruption, and he noticed that: — “Vulcan Island, which last year was a smallish, flat island with a few trees now was a great cone some hundreds of feet high—a great mass of pumice and lava.

The hill-side beyond, which used to look so well-kept with its orderly plantations, now appeared like great rolling hills of desert sand. ' The slip on which the ‘Southern Cross’ was several times inspec ted and repainted, was under piles and piles of erupted material. The town itself had been extraordinarily well cleaned up and although many of the very fine trees in some of the avenues were looking much debranched, there was plenty of foliage.

I was glad to find that the Anglican Church and the Rectory had suffered no great damage—some repairs to gutterings and, later, a couple of coats of paint will make everything look as nice as it was before.”

The Brothers

On board the “Southern Cross” was a party of New Britain members of the Brothers movement, returning to their homeland after a year’s training at Tab alia, in the Solomons. This organisation (Ira Retatasiu, The Brothers) is a band of young natives who venture forth among primitive Melanesian peoples as the advance-guard of the white mission aries. While Rev, Baddeley sat in con ference with the New Britain mission staff at Arawe, Tasiu Charles (Dr. C. E.

Fox, the only European member of the movement) assembled the Brothers and discussed with them their own particular difficulties.

“It is a great blow to the development of the Brothers in this part of the dio cese that the Brothers from the Solomons are not allowed to come into New Guinea”, wrote the Bishop in his report. “If they were able to do so, their presence would be a stiffening to these keen, young men in New Britain.

“At the conclusion of the Brothers’ Con ference we had a service of Renewal of Vows and the admission of some new members —the same impressive service which we have at Tabalia (8.5.1.) in October each year and at Lolowai (New Hebrides) in June. These Brothers in the north have special need of our prayers.

They are all young—very young—in the faith; they are up against big difficulties in their districts; and they haven’t during the greater part of the year anyone to oversee them, although, of course, the District Clergy are always at hand and ready to do what they can for them.”

A Missed Opportunity

Rev. Baddeley’s report ends on a note of lament:— “The more I see of the Mandated Ter ritory of New Guinea, the more sad I am that it was not possible for the Church in Australia to go in, in reasonable strength, in the early days of the Mandate. Here was a great territory with a native popu lation of half a million folk committed to the care of the Commonwealth of Aus tralia and yet for some years nothing was done by the English Church. True, the Roman Church, the Lutherans, and the Methodists had long been at work in large areas of the territory, but a great deal remained to be done. The over whelming proportion of missionaries were

of German nationality, and that is still the case.

“If -‘the ultimate test of the retention of any Mandate is whether a nation de serves to hold it’, surely it was due to the Commonwealth that the Church should have made far greater efforts to make her contribution in the building up of the individual and corporate life of the native peoples. Government officials and 'anthropologists have their contri bution to give; but a civilisation which is merely based on Government regulations and scientific principles (so called—and many of them are mere theories) is not enough. There must be a leavening of those very things which only a Church

can give which sees in these people not merely so many heads to be counted, taxed, and ‘organised’ by a host of Gov ernment officials, but men made in the image of God, Whose will it is that they should have the fullest opportunity to develop those gifts with which He has possessed them "

Mr. Ronald J. Beech, of Gavutu, British Solomon Islands, recently was elected a fellow of the Royal Empire Society, Lon don.

Mr. D. W, Lattimer, of the Colonial Audit Service, has been transferred from Nigeria, British East Africa, to Fiji to take up the position of Assistant Auditor.