Copra In Solomons

Letter to the Editor AS no one else seems prepared to do so, and as you have continued to repeat in your recent issues, statements to the effect that “there was now a market for all South Pacific copra” (“PIM”, Sept., page 7), I feel impelled to flatly contradict those furphies, at least as re gards the Gizo District, which is perhaps the most important copra producing dis trict in the British Solomons.

I know of narcels of smoked copra which have been seeking a buyer since July. 1940. Yes, 1940! Some of them are on my own estates, whilst other pro ducers have accumulations for which they have been seeking. buyers for the best part of a year.

In the face of such bitter facts, why turn the knife in our wounds by re peatedly printing such nonsense as the

above quotation?

It would be much more to the point were you to print the names of these coy buyers of “all South Pacific copra”, and tell us where they are to be found—and then step quickly aside to avoid being trampled to death in the rush.

I am, etc.,

Leslie F. Gill.

Gizo, BSI, 8/11/1941.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Our correspondent is quite right; far too much has been made of the fact that Fiji and New Guinea copra is being shipped, while everyone has ignored the embarrassing accumulations in Tonga, Gilbert and El lice, Solomons, etc. One of the main objects of the new South Pacific Copra Board is to shift these accumulations of copra from the smaller territories.