Trenchant Criticism Of Tonga's

Condition

Are People Being Properly Trained for Peasant-Farmer Life?

By A Resident Of Tonga

YOUR issue of August is a remarkable one. I have been a regular reader of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” since it was a small news-sheet—quite a few years ago now.

To the many references to, and articles on, Tonga and its affairs during that period I have naturally given particular attention, and what may have appeared to the casual reader as severe criticism of the Administration, and those con

nected with it, is amply justified by the case of the high Government officer, re ported in the pages of the August issue.

The policy of the Tongan Government has been an extraordinary one-as it well might have been in view of the disclo sures now made, and perhaps more to come. How can the well-being, and the guidance of a native people, through what must be, at best, a difficult period of transition, be anything but a tragi-comedy when the destiny of those people is in the hands of such a type as that referred to?

The financial policy is alone sufficient to condemn them. In 1919, the f.o.b. value of the Kingdom’s exports totalled £443,- 195, and the value has declined by a zig-zag but downward course to £96,803, in 1938. The expenditure by the Gov ernment, at £55,533 in 1919, has increased by a zig-zag but pronounced upward course to £63,921 in 1938-39, and £65,910 for the current year.

Taking the average copra output at 12,000 tons, the value received by the producer (i.e., the ultimate taxpayer) during 1938 was about £50,000, and dur ing 1939 the average price will work out to something round £48,000, if the stabil ised price holds until the end of the year.

Bananas, say, £3,500 for each year. The Government, therefore, imposes taxation higher than the total value of the people’s income. It not only wants the lot, but more besides!

Is any further comment needed? Un fortunately, yes! The quantity of copra exported has been allowed to decline through lack of any administrative effort to induce the native to cultivate his al lotment and to improve its productive capacity. The only guidance in the Ad ministration is that which leads their steps towards the pay-office at the end of the month. As to any example shown to the natives, your pages are eloquent enough.

THE drift from the land, to a sort of lackadaisical and purposeless exist ence, which is the trend of the younger generation of Tongans can only prove dis astrous unless immediately checked.

The unsuitable secondary education given to these young Tongans, both male and female, the surprising lack of dis cipline both in the schools and in then homes, is bringing about a rapid deterior ation in the moral fibre of the race. The missions are largely responsible for this, but the Government must shoulder the blame for their acquiescence in a disas trous policy, and for their own inertia.

Where the Wesleyan Mission ends and the Government begins is a line of de marcation so fine as to be indistinguish able, and the mutual support given by the one to the other is nowhere so suc cessful as in their campaigns to deprive the native of his last cent. But, in the vital matter of fitting these young people for the life which their natural environ ment provides, and for which solely they are capable (with one or two exceptions) both the Government and its mission appendage (or, perhaps, it should be, the Wesleyan Mission and its Government appendage) have lamentably failed.

They are producing far too large a per centage of undesirable characters of no

use to any community—some are crim inals, some just offensive larrikins, others simply loud and flash, others so swelled-headed as to be merely silly, others again just stupid, most of them lazy—but all of them carrying evidence suggesting that the march of “civilisa tion” is too much for them. They are neither Tongan nor European, and the best thing that could happen, for their peace and happiness, would be a return to that mode of life to which Nature had fitted them before any mission dis turbed them, or a Government exploited them.

Materially, they have made no progress in the last 20 years. With all the wealth they have produced in two decades, they live in the main in the same sloth and squalor that they did before. Where has the money gone? The Government of Tonga, and all the missions combined, have done nothing to improve the real life of the Tongan people.

Your editorial remarks on page 4 of August issue, about the Japanese, are trenchant and admirable. Asiatics are not a good influence on primitive peoples; they certainly are bad competitors in trade.

Here again, the Tongan Government must take its share of the blame. But if current belief here is correct, the ad mission of Japanese was the work, or lack of work —certainly lack of guts— of the then British Agent and Consul who, after permanently and irreparably injuring his countrymen, enjoys at this moment the handsome pension which they provide! A typical example of John Bull, the friend of everybody’s children but his own!

How far British capitalism has helped the Asiatics in Tonga to attain their present strong position, and how far such support of foreign interests and manufac tures. direct and indirect, is detrimental to the true interests of British democ racy, are questions which the British Government might well consider.

for developing a rich and beautiful country. It is a practical and eminently readable book, worth attention—which it will not receive from Australia’s swarm of politicians.

The Fighting Soldier, By Major

W. A. S. Dunlop, lately of the Australian Staff Corps, is a timely little volume, Published by Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney, at 2/-. Here are set forth, clearly and simply, all the information sought by the young soldier—and especially the young officer—newly transplanted from civilian to military life. The book con tains a great mass of data, handily ar ranged—but an index would have made it handier, Mr. and Mrs. W. Wyatt, of Port Moresby, Papua, received many congratu lations on November 13, on the birth of a daughter.

Miss L. M. Lovell-Smith, who arrived in Fiji in September, recently was ap pointed Staff Sister in the X-ray Department of the Fiji Nursing Service.

Dr. R. W. Schuch, who resigned from the New Guinea Administration several months ago owing to ill-health, died re cently in a N.S.W. hospital.

Mr. S. Kensett, of the Posts and Tele graph Department in New Guinea, re turned to Rabaul in November after spending leave in Australia.

Mr. R. M. J. Cameron was recently appointed clerk of the New Guinea Legislative Council, replacing Mr. G. E.

Walker.

Miss M. Tracey arrived in New Guinea recently from Sydney to join the ac counts department of W. R. Carpenter and Co. Ltd., Rabaul.