Was There Malaya-Mindedness in
pp. 29-30 · Read in the full issue
the Solomon Islands?
Letter to the Editor THANKS for the article, “Alternatives to Copra”, in December “PIM”.
This is the kind of information we have been waiting for for years.
If ever we exiled planters go back to the Pacific we must seek economic sal vation from the industrial products based on the coconut palm. We must get rid of our copra complex and enlist the aid of the industrial chemist to assist us in turning our estates to fuller account. The industrialisation of Austra lia in recent times indicates the direc tion where we should look for this aid.
Re “unsaleable smoked” copra: it was rather a coincidence that about a week after my letter of 8/11/41 was written (it appeared in December “PIM”, p. 19), smoked copra became marketable at £5/12/6 per ton on the beach in the Gizo District, after being unsaleable for over a year. This supported in a drama tic manner (i.e.. from nothing, to £5/12/6 per ton) the doubts I expressed (re the alleged unmarketability of “smoked”) in my letter in the February “PIM” (“The Future of Copra”, p. 30).
DID you read that despatch of the “Times” correspondent from Bata via on the Singapore disaster, and the causes that led to it? The article was described by “The Economist” as the “most terrible despatch that had been printed for years”.
It surely was. as it indicted a Colonial Administrative System that has probably had no parallel in history for ineptitude.
Our BSI Administration was all that the “Times” correspondent said the Malayan (or for that matter the Indian) Adminis tration was. (You have to live in countries ad ministered by the Colonial Office to appreciate the falsity of the legend that has grown up about the ability of Brit ish Administrations to run coloured countries. This colossal boloney and ballyhoo has created an official Maginot mindedness of smug self-satisfaction and fatuousness which has required the fall of Singapore—and the possible loss of half an Empire—to dispel: if it has been dispelled, which I doubt. You can’t alter fools.) I made myself practically a social outcast during my 30 years in the Solo
mons, so far as Officialdom was con cerned, for holding the above views, and giving 'expression to them in the old “Planters’ Gazette” and elsewhere. The opinions of Gill of the “Solomon Islands Planters’ Gazette” were termed “Bolshe vism” by the Pooh-bahs, sycophants and yes-men of the BSI. But when the London “Times” says the same things— alas, too late!—they are called words of wisdom.
When we British people go back to the Islands there must be a New Order all right—politically, commercially and economically. Australia must run those places and sack the duds of the Old School Tie brigade. We shall have to scrap the sentimental notions of govern ment, that have nearly lost us an Empire, and run things realistically.
Never again should it be possible for an Administration to practically wipe out the pioneer class of small planters and traders (who opened up the Islands, and would have garrisoned them in war) by allowing monopolistic corpora tions and alien Chinese to supplant them, and to drive them from the coun try.
Friends of mine are fighting for the country in which they went bankrupt.
Are their Chinese supplanters fighting for us, or China? Not on your life!
Reverse the situation: Would German, Japanese or Chinese in similar circum stances, have allowed us to do these things to them? Again, not on your life!
They think of us only as soft fools for allowing them to get away with it.
And that is the root of the matter—we have been mad, soft fools; and the Orientals have known it—and profited by it.
I am, etc.,
Leslie F. Gill.
Caulfield, Melbourne, Vic. 23/2/1942.
Miss Audrey Harcourt, of the Secre tariat branch of the Fiji Administration, was in New Zealand in February spending three months’ furlough.
Mr. Henry Dexter, formerly of East ern Papua, sends greetings to old Papua friends from his tomato-farm at “Sama rai”, West Lane. Hayling Island, Hamp shire, England, and comments on events in Papua as reported by “PIM”. One wonders what he would think of Papua to-day!
Mr. John K. Brownlees, formerly Dis trict Officer in the Solomon Islands recently took up duties at Nukualofa, Tonga, as Secretary to the Government.
Rev. Alexander Hardie, MA, of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Suva, re turned to New Zealand from Fiji last month. He and Mrs. Hardie served in the Colony for six years.