How Shall We Punish

Native Servants?

A RESIDENT magistrate in Papua, discussing the question of whether employers should be allowed to ad minister corporal punishment to delin quent native servants, said: “Supposing you were a passenger on an incoming boat, and a 12-stone steward made your bath too hot or served you with cold soup, would you give the offending stew ard ‘a slap in the face with your open hand’? I am sure you would not. But if a Papuan servant of about 7-stone should commit either of these offences, I can imagine that some people would sail into that offender for his ‘dumb insolence’.”

On this subject, Mr. B, D. Parer writes from Wau: — “If I were in charge of a school in Australia and I had a careless or in subordinate pupil, according to the rea soning of the magistrate, I should say to the child, T will not cane you, because if I were a passenger on one of the Burns, Philp boats, and a steward was careless or insolent, I would not cane him.’

“The point is that the punishment that is provided for a careless or inso lent steward —that is, discharge from a job on which depends the livelihood of himself and his family—is far more severe than the corporal punishment of a native. The livelihood of a native does not depend on his job; and a native, in any event, thinks nothing of a little term in calaboose.”

Mr. S. Lake, formerly a member of the “Fiji Times and Herald” staff, re cently joined the. New Zealand military forces, for service in the Near East.