Medical Care Of

N.H. Natives

Credit to Administration or Missions?

Letter to the Editor.

REV. MR. NOTTAGE has taken ex ception to some of my remarks in my reply to Miss Cheeseman con cerning Mr. Harrisson’s book, “Savage Civilisation”. He sees in it something that is not there, to wit, a comparison of work done by the missions with that done by planters and traders, and others.

I can assure him nothing was farther from my intention and I know the more experienced missionaries never thought so, either. I was protesting against an incorrect statement in Mr. Harrisson’s book. To do this by making other in correct comparisons would be absurd.

All I wished to do was to correct a mis statement and to give credit where cre dit was due. As Mr. Nottage admits that planters and traders do their some thing towards the health and well-being of the natives, by his admission he shows

that I was justified in my protests.

Mr. Nottage is rather stingy in giving any credit at all to the Administration; and the Rockefeller Foundation is cer tainly due for very much more than he concedes. None of us can say that the Administration does as much as it should, or could, either as regards pre vention or treatment, but it does con siderably more than Mr. Nottage is pre pared to admit, and no good cause is served by belittling what is done. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the Administration pays the few N.M.P.’s we have, and for the periodi cal rounds of injections of N.A.B. and hookworm treatment. Both the French and British hospitals are subsidised—, not very liberally, certainly—for treating the natives. On the islands of Malexula and Santo, as well as in Vila, the French hospitals and medical men attend to quite large numbers of natives.

Mr. Nottage has a just grievance re garding the sentence, ‘*And what of the much-abused Condominium who supply the drugs used by the missions?” This is incorrect, and I know it is incorrect, as I have discussed the matter with mis sionaries of more than one sect, and knew they paid for the drugs, and what the principal drug cost them —and, in cidentally, the cost is very much less than what the planters, who get then drugs from Australia, pay. The clause has got mixed up in transcription, prob ably from the draft to the copy sent to the Editor of the “P.1.M.” In the draft it reads: “And what of the much abused Condominium, and what of the Rockefeller Foundation who make avail able the principal drug used by the mis sionaries”. I regret this error which is due to carelessness and not to delibera tion.

Outside this clause, what I said, in ef fect, was that planters and traders paid for drugs, in the highest market, from their own personal pockets, whereas the missions, being corporate bodies, paid for them out of mission funds. As Mr. Not tage says, there are missionaries who also pay out of their own pockets. I believe him, and give them credit for it.

As I have pointed out, the point I wished to emphasise was, that it was not by any means fair or correct to say that the missionaries were the only ones who did anything for the natives.

Concerning Mr. Nottage’s last para graph, I can only say that I had the same authority to assert what I did as he had to deny it, and from what I have been told since, by missionaries, more justification.

I am, etc.,

Ewan Corlette.

Bushman’s Bay, Malekula, N.H.

August 10, 1938.

Dr. C. Cooke, of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, recently carried out scientific work in connection with land shells in Fiji on behalf of the Museum.

Mr, George Fear arrived in New Zealand from Norfolk Island by the K.P.M. liner “Tasman” in August, to settle down in the Dominion. He was for 13 years a well known resident of N.I. and at one time was a member of the Executive Council.

Mr. E. E. Jenkins, LL.B., M.A. (Cantab.), has been appointed Attorney-General in Fiji. Joining the Nyasaland Service, British Central Africa, in 1925, he ser ved for two years before being transferred to Northern Rhodesia, where he acted in various capacities includingl Acting Attorney-General and Solicitor General.