Marquesas

New Life In The

Fine Race Increasing in Numbers

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Aug. 25.

ONE thing which pleases beyond measure is information from authori tative quarters that the Marquesan natives are not only holding their own, but are increasing in numbers.

For many years we believed the Marquesan race was doomed to extinc tion; yet the Roman Catholic Fathers never gave up, and, by fine doctoring and good teaching and patient service, they have accomplished the impossible.

The next step will be to keep tourists, scientists and wastrels out of the Mar quesas islands, and this fine Polynesian nation may regain some measure of its former numbers.

The French, after a century of ex perience, have arrived at the only possible policy for the preservation of native peoples—i.e., to close the islands against visit or settlement by Europeans, and to maintain a centre of administration and commerce on one central island alone.

This policy was first applied to the Austral Islands, and the health and happiness of the people of that archi pelago bear witness to its wisdom.

The history of European settlement reads like the campaigns of Genghis Khan, First to be blotted out were the Canary Islanders; then the Caribs, of the West Indies, the North American Indians, the Polynesians, of Hawaii. “Westward the Course of Empire” has brought des truction and annihilation to native races.

Will not the awakened conscience of mankind save from the inevitable fate, the pitiful remnants of once happy little peoples?

The Hollywood conception of Polynesia is sickening. The valour and fortitude of the Maori, the Tahitian, the Samoan on the field of battle are giving the lie to all the degenerate balderdash written and acted in that Holy City of Clown Worship.

EDITORIAL NOTE: When Europeans first saw the Marquesas, they were in habited by perhaps 100,000 light-skinned people—a good-looking, hospitable race, described as the finest type of Polynesian.

By 1920, after a century of European ex ploitation (which included debauchery by waves of beach-combers, the intro duction of venereal diseases, influenza, measles and tuberculosis, and wholesale “blackbirding” to the South American coast), there remained only a miserable, dispirited remnant of about 2,500.