Retrospect

Papua in Prospect and Retrospect

Some Reflections by PXYZ NOW that Papua is free of Japs, it has practically entered its post-war period.

As a pre-war proposition, it was a backward land, and for the next three or four years it is likely to be more so, as far as any real or beneficial progress is concerned.

It is possible that its new boss, Mr. E.

Ward, may introduce some startling nov elties; but that need create no particular apprehension. What Mr. Ward is likely to offer the natives will not be what the natives want, and what they do not want quickly fades out. Three years of war have not greatly changed the mental outlook of the Fuzzy-wuzzy.

In pre-war days, harking back particu larly to Sir Hubert Murray’s regime, Papua had a government with some sign of vitality in it. Now, local rule is to give place to rule from Canberra, and what Canberra handles in the Pacific it quickly deprives of life. So, in spite of a measure of ability in the new adminis tration, Papua for a time will be dead, or as good as dead.

AS a matter of fact, no more beneficial fate could at the moment overtake the Territory. Papua and its people, native and administrative whites, are tired out. A good deal has been asked

of them and, according to their lights, they have given it; but the spurt is now over and its aftermath—one approaching

exhaustion—being reaped.

Papua, for a few years to come, needs to be allowed to sink into a form of Twilight' Sleep, to be let he up and lick its wounds. Both races have done their share. In the case of the natives, man power was called up beyond the limit of safety and almost beyond the limit oi survival; yet all that the toil and sweat of Papuan manpower, stretched to its utmost, has produced has been a spate of temporary wartime works of practically no use for the future. Nothing else could have been expected.

No comparison of the Papua of 1915-17 with the Papua of 1942-44 could ever be fair. In the former case, the country was barely touched by the war; in the latter, if the land itself has not been materially harmed by enemy occupation, its peoples have.

Still, it is interesting to find that, in 1915, wartime Papua had an agricultural staff that was doing good work and that its prospects for development were im measurably better than they are to-day.

In 1915, Citronella Grass and Arnatto were being grown on the slopes of the Astrolabe Range, near Moresby; sisal hemp in the hinterland; vanilla planta tions were being established and stocked from Government stations in Papua’s rainy east end; rice was being cultivated in the thickly populated Mekeo district; and the possession of a pocket coconut plantation meant a certain living. Tobacco was not grown, but it held a hope for the future; no one then believed that all attempts to grow it for local consump tion would be stamped out by vested interests. rAT is Papua in retrospect. What is the position of all these agricultural industries to-day?

If Papua ahd the Papuans are given the medicine they need —summed up in a word of four letters, REST—it will prob ably survive and become a country of use to Australia.

What is going to put the finishing touches to this lovely but eminently prickly land, and kill it outright, would be an invasion of southern exploiters, with letters from Canberra in their pockets, and a mentality that proves they spent the war years, not fighting in Papua, but enriching themselves in safety in their homeland. Why not? They had the soldiers to protect them.

Those who have worked and fought here, both white and native, are not going to welcome them, at any rate not till there has been sufficient recovery to keep them in their place. All the would-be get-rich-quick artists we have been pro mised are not wanted; native manpower has been drained of its strength and blood too deeply to support them yet.