Remarkable Record

Twice As Many

Samoans

Remarkable Record Under NZ Rule

THE native population of Western Samoa is now estimated at 60,000 — double that of 1920, when New Zea land took over the Mandate.

This phenomenal increase is thought to be the result of improved health—and of the work of the Native Medical Prac titioners trained in the Medical School in Suva, who have been sent to country districts to establish dressing-stations and hospitals, and who have won the confidence of the native people by their skill and knowledge. Through them, the local chiefs have seen to it that their villages are kept in a sanitary condition.

The Samoan, generally, has been well cared for by the New Zealand Adminis tration. In Savai’i, and other places, concrete bathing pools have been built; water has been laid on to villages; and electricity has been supplied to fales (native houses) at a flat rate of 4/- per month.

“Old Granny” And The

Administrator

THE “PIM,” for years, has described the stolid, unenterprising, unimagina tive rule of New Zealand in Samoa as “Old Granny Government”; and it retracts nothing of what it has said about the stupidities of New Zealand’s administrative policy.

But—credit where credit is due! For the last 10 years NZ has been exceed ingly well served in Samoa, by a suc cession of devoted officials, led by Mr. A.

C. Turnbull; and, although the country has been stagnant, the natives have been well and conscientiously cared for, and the result is seen in those remarkable figures.

“If any comment were needed upon “Old Granny Government” it may be based on the astonishing fact that NZ stubbornly declines to call Mr. Turnbull anything but “Acting Administrator.”

Yet he has been “acting” as Administra tor since 1935, and New Zealand has never had, in Samoa, a chief executive who has brought the Territory so much real peace and native progress. “Acting Administrator” (limited pay and pension rights) for seven years! Could the meanness and parsimony of Wellington go further?