"Lord How-Haw" and

the Copra Planters

By “Ga Nt Bulu”

I ORD Haw-haw, the Hun of Berlin is j a lying renegade; but there are times, when he is not putting over the Goebbels propaganda, when he seems to come near to the truth. He has said that the British masses are such fools that they allow themselves to be ruled by trusts and combines—greedy, ruthless groups of international financiers who control the instrumentalities of demo cratic government in the interests of their filthy game of profit-making.

We copra-growers listen to this, with some perturbation, because we know that, even before war broke out, our industry was controlled by a great international combine, whose only interest in us was to force us to produce copra at the lowest possible rates. The lower our incomes, the bigger were the combine’s profits.

We have chosen to fight for our demo cratic system, rather than accept the “new order” offered by Hitler and Haw haw, because we believe that, when the war is over, the democratic system will ruthlessly rid itself of the filthy trusts and combines, and the brutal selfishness of money-power, and all the other para sitical growths of our developing social order.

But, I frankly confess, I begin to lose heart when I read such things as the following. It is from page 68 of “Science in War”, written by a group of scientific men to describe what our country is doing under war conditions. This extract is from the section headed “Food”: — “With the lessons of Lord Devonport’s failure in our minds, we might have ex pected that the Government would set up a scientific advisory committee on nutri tion at the start of this war, at the latest.

Such a committee was tardily produced nine months after war was declared.

Admirable as this committee is in its constitution, there is little evidence that the advice it will give will be taken, be cause, as we have already seen, business interests conflict with the application of scientific discoveries in the Ministry of Food.

“Let us take a current example. In November last, the Food Ministry issued a statement which suggested that all mar garines sold in this country contained added vitamins, to make them equivalent in vitamin content to average summer butter. Yet in December it was still pos sible to buy margarine that had been vitamized (?) by the addition of skimmed milk (which contains none of the vita mins contained in butter) or had only one vitamin added, and nothing on the label to indicate this deficiency. The suggestion of the Ministry was therefore wilfully false.

“The fourth report of the select com mittee on national expenditure has called attention to what was known privately to be a scandal: that the trade directors in the Ministry were representatives of vested interests that conflicted with the interests of the public. In at least one case an important trade official has been simultaneously performing his duties in the Ministry and engaged as a trade re presentative in negotiating with the Ministry as regards the operating mar gins to be allowed to his own trade.

“The report also mentions the appre hensions that programmes are being settled on the basis of a rough and ready compromise between various interests, and not on the basis of a plan scienti fically devised in the interests of the country as a whole. The recent pooling of margarine supplies, and the decision

to issue only two brands, both of which are said to be vitamized, are minor cor rections of this mistake.”

This substantiates the article written by me in “PIM” of June, 1940, in which I showed that the Ministry of Food, in association with the margarine producers, had raised the price from Bd. to 9d. per pound. I attached to the article a cut ting from the “Bulletin”, of Glasgow.

There is but one conclusion any South Sea copra planter can come to —namely, that there is no hope for an industry controlled by a combine that not only has a hold and octopus-clamp on the Ministry of Food, in the form of the members of the combine being not only members of the combine, but also mem bers of the Ministry of Food.

Think of the hopelessness of a con ference in Australia, comprised mostly of Government officials, sitting looking for a market for copra, when there is ap

parently only one market to look at— namely, the combine market, which is controlled both in the Ministry of Food and outside the Ministry of Food, Miss F. J. Pearce, nurse at Kiriwina, Papua, for the Methodist Mission, re turned to the Territory in March, after an absence of over a year owing to ill health. She has been a member of the Mission for more than 25 years.

Miss Margaret Loughman and Miss lona Tout recently arrived in Suva to join the Fiji Nursing Service as staff sisters.

Rev. J. W. F. Gillan, principal of the Tangoa Training Institute (New Hebrides) conducted by the Presbyterian Mission, is at present in Victoria on furlough.

He is studying at Melbourne University for the degree of Bachelor of Education.

Hon. Leonard Murray, Administrator of Papua, and Mrs. Murray, visited the Western Division of Papua at the end of March in the Government vessel “Laurabada”, on a tour of inspection. Mr.

Justice Gore accompanied the Adminis trator.

Mrs. W. Lock, wife of Pastor Lock of the Seventh Day Adventist Mission at Mirigeda, Papua, has been in Australia receiving medical attention.