Tropicalities

FIJI Indians have gone all Hollywood.

Latest development in the Raki Raki district is a “Black Devil Society.” Object: to scare the sox off Indian cane-growers who are honest enough to want to cut their cane for the mill. Recently, about a dozen blocks of cane, 10 acres each, were burned, when ready for harvesting. A letter in Hindi, signed by the melodra matic “Black Devil Society,” was found on the site, and it warned growers that, if they persisted in cutting their cane, harm would be done their children, their homes and next year’s crop.

What the Fiji Indian obviously needs is a little less “Black” and a little more “Khaki.” * A MONO the Bills which were to be presented at the recent meeting of the Fiji Legislative Council (sche duled to begin in Suva on December 17) was one which proposed to combine the present Residential Tax and the special war tax—making the total tax £l/10/per head per annum! Is it possible that in this world of tax-gone-mad, such a state of things can be?

In Australia, if you earn £7 per week,

you pay, in direct taxation, £l/10/- per week; if you are unfortunate enough to be a £l,OOO a year man, the tax-gatherer extracts almost £8 per week from your weekly earnings. Is a “voice” in the running of your country worth all this?

It is doubtful! » IT is well known that the Auckland fruit merchants are pessimistic to the point of defeatism. A story is told of one wealthy gentleman who, after a recent shipment of Cook Islands toma toes, complained that he had lost £l,OOO on the shipment.

“How can that be?” asked a friend “You bought the fruit in Rarotonga for 15/- a box and it sold on the markets for 31/-.”

“Yes, I know,” was the lugubrious reply. “But it should have sold for 36/-.” ♦ HOW courteous is the Japanese; He always says, “Excuse it, please.”

He climbs into his neighbour’s garden, And smiles, and says, “I beg your pardon”; He bows and grins a friendly grin, And calls his hungry family in; He grins, and bows a friendly bow: “So sorry, this my garden now.” —From a Volume of Poems by Ogden Nash.

JAPAN has a secret weapon: Tiger cubs! Among the souvenirs that soldiers have tried to bring back to Australia from New Guinea (cats, dogs goats, grass skirts, wooden spears and whatnot) are tiger cubs—or so says Aus tralian Director-General of Health Dr Cumpston. Tiger cubs, the statement adds, are not native to New Guinea, but it is believed that the Japs brought them there from Malaya, and left them behind in their retreat. Nice thing if post-war Territorians have tigers, as well as bureaucrats, “Boongs” and busy-bodies, to add to their troubles.

Animal souvenirs are destroyed on arri val in Australia. And keepsakes of the wood-carving and grass skirt variety are confiscated lest they introduce some wood pest or dangerous insect eggs. It would be interesting to know just how many grass skirts, wooden spears, bows and arrows, carved lakatois and model villages entered Australia, unconfiscated and unfumigated and presumably carry ing the same sort of pests, before the war. A war is a most interesting edu cational medium: it gets ’em all in! Even Dr. Cumpston and the Custom Depart ment chiefs have now discovered that large land mass—wog- and weevil-rid den New Guinea—somewhere north of 23°. * rE fortunes of war! The palm, we think, goes to the Territorian, now a member of the AIP, who, after a year in an entirely womanless world “somewhere in the north,” unexpectedly returned to a base temporarily in pos session of Tivoli show-girls. During a four-hours’ air-raid, on .the same night, he found himself alone in a slit-trench with the luscious, female acrobat!

Mr. O. W. Higgins, who was manager of Papuan Oil Development, Ltd., and directed an oil search in Papua in 1937-9, was released from the service of the Shell Company in 1942. and obtained a commission in the United States forces.

He was recently in Samoa.

The death occurred recently, in Los Angeles, of M. Milos Riunac, who was the leading hotelkeeper in Tahiti. He took over the Blue Lagoon Hotel from Cap tain Wainwright, and the White Beach Hotel, at Punaania, from M. Levenson.

He always maintained first-class hotels.