Pacific"

"Funk-Hole of the Pacific"

Tahiti Fears for Her Good Reputation

A RESIDENT of Papeete writes thus to the editor of the “Pacific Islands Monthly”:— Lately, there have begun to arrive in Tahiti a few Englishmen within the con scription age, flagrant draft-dodgers, and acknowledging it. Within an hour of arrival they are “on the binge”, as the phrase is. Some of them stay on it until they reach the stage known as “jimjams”, or some other form of alcoholic affliction.

They likewise, of course, at once consort with the lowest rank of Papeete cabaret “gold-diggers”.

Some—probably four such—reached here by a recent French boat, having left England about the time the war started, come across Canada and then gone down to Panama to get said steamer. Nobody knows how they were able to get out of England, but, as you know, it can be done.

These, having got well into their cups within 24 hours of arrival here, pro claimed to all and sundry that they had “bloody well beat the bloody war to it”, and so on. They further divulged that their parents were financing them to the extent of enabling them to live here until the danger of their being compelled to act the part of ordinary decency was past.

It appears to me—and I think I know you well enough to be sure you will agree with me—that some of the ignominy this type of human insect so well merits ought in some manner to be thrust upon them.

There has been suggested here a name for them—the Company of the Con temptible—and maybe you will feel in clined to publish that.

The French Government, so well and ably conducted now by the excellent M de Gery, is as disgusted as any at the suggestion that Tahiti, as one American

writer has lately put it, may be named “the funk-hole of the Pacific”; and, lately, a regulation has gone into effect requiring that anyone wishing to come here must first secure permission from the Colonial Government—a very wise enactment, indeed. Yet, even then, per mission can hardly be refused without specific cause, and it is not easy to prove that these idlers and wasters are actu ally draft-dodgers. But they muddy the clear waters of Tahitian charm as the mire-living reptile in some limpid river besmears the surface as it emerges from its hole. *

Editorial Note

WE were inclined, at first, to publish nothing of this shameful thing. But the response of British men, all over the Empire, to the call for service, has been so magnificent, and the courage of Eng

land’s youth, in every test to date, has been so high, that we need not fear that the British spirit will be judged by these skulkers in Tahiti.

It is better that we should give pub licity to the facts, so that the cowards hiding in Tahiti may be recognised for what they are, and shunned by decent people.

Englishmen are not cowards, usually, and the pity of it is that these represen tatives of English youth should have chosen a French colony, where there is a large American community, as their “funk-hole”.

Mr. John Logan Brown, B.Sc. Engineer ing (Glasgow), A.M.1.C.E., A.M.1.W.E., arrived in Suva in December to take up the post of Senior Executive Engineer in the Fiji Public Works Department.