Future Of The Solomons

Melanesia's Inspiring Bishop Busy in Australia

AN extraordinary amount of good work for the Melanesian Mission (Solo mons and New Hebrides) has been done in Australia in recent weeks by the Bishop of Melanesia (Right Rev. W. H.

Baddeley, DSO, MC), who has spent a long overdue furlough in characteristic appeals for his native peoples—charac teristic in that they are refreshing, in spiring and cannot be ignored.

Dr. Baddeley is the Bishop who, as he himself expressed it, “lived like a rabbit" for many months, dodging the Japanese invaders of his primitive territories, but refusing to desert his people. For the second time in his life he smelt gun powder.

In World War I he was the com batant leader of a British battalion— that was where he won his decorations —and in World War II he saw the Japanese come into the Solomons at the end of April, 1942; he was there when their convoys raced away north again before the American planes in the Battle of the Coral Sea; he watched the Japs spread over the central islands between April and August, 1942; and he was seldom out of the hearing of the guns and bombs when the Americans, between August and December, 1942, drove them out of the Tulagi-Guadalcanal area. His simply-told stories of that bitter year are full of drama.

BECAUSE the Bishop is so deeply in terested in the future of the Solo mons—or, rather, in the future of the natives—his visit to Australia is timely, because the political halls are full of rumours relating to the Protectorate.

The Australian Government, through Dr. Evatt, has voiced a plea that the Solomons in future should be under Aus tralian administration. Another report has it that, as the Solomons, although one of the biggest, are about the least developed group in the Pacific, no im portant interest will be hurt if the present Protectorate should become an American territory—that is, if the Americans really want the group. Still others insist that the Americans will wish to hold the group at the disposal

of the South Pacific Regional Confer ence—or whatever international body should be set up to deal with Pacific affairs in the future.

The Bishop, questioned at an interested meeting in Sydney, said frankly that he was not competent to express an opinion. He added, however, that he had talked to hundreds of American servicemen, and most of them believed that, once these world troubles had been settled, a wave of isolationism would sweep the United States, and that the latter would be unwilling to undertatke any heavy responsibilities outside North America.

Training Natives—Suva

Medical School

DR. BADDELEY made an interesting statement to an Australian news paper. He said he was now in touch with the Episcopal Church of the United States, concerning the possibility of members of a teaching order coming to help to staff the Solomons mission schools, which are training native boys as teachers, medical practitioners and agriculturalists. At the moment, he said, fifteen lads were doing a four years' course at Suva medical school, and seven others were already at work in the Solo mons. Several of these remained during the Japanese occupation, and rendered valuable service, which was ’ greatly ap preciated by the American and New Zealand forces.

It was learned that Dr. Baddeley is a warm admirer of the Central Medical School, of Suva, which turns out well qualified native medical practitioners for most of the Territories of the South Pacific. This was interesting; because the Church of England authorities who conduct missions in Papua are urging the Australian Government to establish a Medical Training School for the natives of Papua and New Guinea, rather than send a selected number of New Guinea lads to the Central Medical School in Fiji for training. The argu ment against the latter plan is that of environment: they say that the New Guinea boys sent to Suva would so com pletely lose touch with their own people and country that more harm than good would be achieved.

It is to be hoped that the Australian Department interested has taken the chance to learn from Bishop Baddeley, first-hand, something of what the Suva Medical School has done for the natives of the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides, who are just as primitive as the natives of New Guinea.

THE Bishop told another newspaper that if we wished the Solomons to remain British —and it was the earnest wish of the natives that they should —we must be prepared to pay something more for Solomon Islands administration. Britain had administered the Protectorate somewhat too cheaply in the past, he said.

American Help

I HAVE had nothing but kindly help and encouragement from Americans on Guadalcanal," he said. “The medical officers, especially, seemed to revel in the opportunities for research.

We have an infant mortality rate of about 400 in 1,000 and the Americans are eager to help in reducing it."

Many white men and women who re mained in the Solomons throughout the past year, said the Bishop, owed their

lives to the simple Island folk, who gave splendid proof of loyalty.

After the war, more schools would be wanted to counteract the stupendous forces unleashed among his primitive people, who for two years had experi enced so much evil. To replace what had been destroyed would cost £25,000.