Where All Is Peace

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Nov. 6.

AT a time when the thunders of war are echoing among Greenland’s icy mountains, across the continents, over the islands of the oceans even to Little America in the Antarctic, there is one lonely island not many days sail from Tahiti, where the noise of the turmoil does not penetrate to blemish the tran quillity of the life of its people.

This island we shall not designate fur ther than to place it as one of the islands long ago protected by the Gov ernment of French Oceania from alien visitation and settlement.

For this reason and because its value for commerce is not great, power schooners seldom voyage thither. The island is very fertile, but the products of its plantations are needed for the in habitants. Its exports—fine pandanus mats, pigs, fowl, a confection made of the fruit of the banana named “piere”, and sometimes tapa cloth —are conveyed to Papeete on board the small sailing vessel built and manned by the Islanders.

We once were invited to visit this is land in the company of a relative of the highest ranking chief, who was returning after a long absence, to meet his kin.

Almost we were persuaded. Later, we congratulated ourselves that we did not go. The voyage out was speedy and without incident. Returning, however, when the schooner had come within sight of the highest mountain summits of Tahiti, a dead calm held her motion less for 15 days. Food and water were exhausted before a breeze arose to waft the vessel to its destination.

Shortly afterwards, a schooner from the same island, dismasted by a sudden squall, drifted for 50 days until the cur rents of the sea carried her near the coast of Tahiti off Hitia’a, where the emaciated crew were rescued barely in time to save their lives.

Incidents such as these and the later interdict against landing or settlement by anyone not native-born, have safely es tablished the island’s isolation.

No European resides there —not even the usual French gendarme. The agents representing the Colonial Government are the hereditary chiefs who are responsible to the Governor of French Oceania at Papeete. To the best of our knowledge and belief, there is no radio receiver on the island, nor is there a wireless tele graph station. Motor-cars, motor-cycles and other modern purveyors of noise have never been brought ashore to dis turb the peace.

There is a little colony of these Islanders in Papeete and even there they observe scrupulously a polite insular clannishness.

As the Island is hilly, has no harbour, and is on the way to nowhere, it could be of no strategic value to anyone even if war should spread to the Pacific.

Here, indeed, is one tiny oasis of hap piness and health and tranquillity which is almost unique in our present-day world.

Mr. John McGeady, who had resided in Fiji for more than 40 years, died at Suva recently at the age of 78. After a varied career in Australia, Mr. Mc- Geady went to the Colony as a stock man for the late Armstrong Brothers, and later worked in a similar capacity with other Fiji landowners. He is sur vived by Mrs. McGeady, of Suva, a daughter, and four sons—Messrs, Gordon McGeady, of Suva; Staff Sergeant Frank McGeady, Fiji Defence Force; Mr. C.

McGeady, of Auckland: and Ernest Mc- Geady, now serving with the NZ Forces in the Middle East.