The Lion Lies Down With The Lambs

"Our Eddie" and the Bishops Get Together

By Judy Tudor

WHEN a member of the Australian (Labour) Cabinet opens his mouth too wide and puts both feet in it, he is not sacked but is given the port folio of External Territories. It was thus, after the Australian general elec tion of 1943, that the New Guinea Ter ritories were given into the tender keep ing of Mr. E. J. Ward.

Eddie J,, until shortly before the elec tion, was engaged in dragging skeletons from the cupboards of the War Depart ment, and his “Brisbane Line” disclo sures led to a Royal Commission and the demoting of Eddie. But Eddie is a hardy plant and, although then lopped off at the roots, later, with the help of the Darlinghurst electorate and a friendly Labour Caucus, he again made Cabinet grade, this time, to the consternation of good Territorians, disguised as the Fuzzy wuzzies’ friend.

Now, the administration of the Terri tories to-day is, to quote any Australian politician, a ’ollow sham. The Army is in possession, all administration takes place in the realms of theory and it is darned hard to whip up any vote-catch ing campaign under existing conditions.

But we all know —having read about it in the papers—that New Guinea is fabulously rich. Gold can be picked up; coconuts and rubber and quinine and

tobacco and tall timber, plus all the spices of the Indies —only better —cocoa and coffee and tea and sisal hemp and cot ton and oil —all are there or grow prac tically without any attention at all; and now that the Yanks have made us air fields and roads —well, what the heck is to stop us?

All Australians know these things. Like everything else even distantly connected with Australia, New Guinea is the best thing of its kind in the world—like Our Harbour Bridge, and Our Climate and Our Wool and Our Labour Conditions and Our Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.

“Reconstruction” therefore has pro vided the fuel for the demanding fires of Mr. Ward’s crusading spirit.

The Australian Government, he says, has post-war plans well in hand for New Guinea. New Guinea is to be “developed,” and God help anyone who tries to stop it!

Just how this is to be done, is, at this writing, being kept a deep, dark secret.

Possibly even the Labour Party, being traditionally adept at blasting established institutions to blazes without arranging a workable substitute, does not know either.

But we can rest assured that it will not be along the lines employed before the evacuation, when “there existed a system of native slavery for the benefit of private enterprise.” Of all the iniquitous practices of the pre-war New Guinea capitalist, this slavish system of “indentured” labour sticks most in Eddie’s gullet, to be regurgitated with good effect, for public benefit, whenever any aspect of New Guinea is mentioned. And in espousing this cause, he is not alone.

POLITICS make strange bed-fellows.

The political gymnastics witnessed by Territorians over the last 2h years have conditioned them for almost anything—even the Sydney spectacle of July 1, when Eddie J.. political red ragger, and Bishop Cranswick, of. the Anglican Mission, and the Rev. J. W.

Burton, of the Methodist Mission, climbed onto the same band-waggon under the same banner—“ Down With the Capitalis tic Slavers of New Guinea.”

Now, the estimable Mr. Ward, having spent the best years of his life being a politician—and product of the Trades Hall, to boot—can perhaps be pardoned, on the ground that he could not know very much about New Guinea or New Guinea natives.

But these mission chiefs cannot pro duce the same alibi. To be sure, mis sionary and layman have never seen eye to eye in Melanesia; but there was never this concerted mission wail that we have heard over the last two years—a period

covered roughly by the period in which Australia’s fighting sons have been in New Guinea. Missionary bodies were represented on the Legislative Councils of both Territories, yet in all those years their voices were seldom heard. Why then, this change of front now?

The reason is not far to seek. This is an age of, publicity; the missions are always in need of funds; and they simply cashed in on the wave of Fuzzy-wuzzy sentimentality that engulfed the Austra lian public. That public is notoriously fickle, and once the AIF is let loose in Timor, or the NET, or Timbucktoo, or some other place, the old Fuzzy-wuzzy and any appeal he has made, will be forgotten.

Territorians. therefore, who get hot under the collar at the innuendoes and implications of these churchmen, should realise that time is not on the side of the missionaries. Who knows —Eddie may be whisked off to heaven in a chariot of fire and brimstone; or he may get a better Cabinet job; or (but this is unlikely) the Government may be heaved out; or, more likely, the war may move away some where else, or peace may come.

ONE of the most interesting of the mis sion utterances of recent date was that in regard to the wages paid indentured labourers. Australian wages have reached an all-time high; Austra lians are wage-conscious as never before; therefore, any missionary heart-burnings over the paltry 3d. and sd. per day paid New Guinea natives is ■ absorbed by. interested ears.

But the missions cunningly fail to point out that 3d. or sd. a day puts the native, according to his lights, on as good a wicket as many Australian wage slaves; and they imply also, by such utterances, that it was the fat. bloated capitalistic planter and the equally pre datory miner who, in the past, fixed the poor heathen’s wages at this sum,_ They did not think it worthwhile to point out that the wages were officially fixed by the Administration—that is, by Canberra.

Above all, I have no recollection of any missionary in the past sponsoring a campaign to increase the wages of indentured natives. It would be interest ing to know (a") if the missions, before the war. obtained a special Administra tion dispensation to pay their workers more than the fixed rate; and (b) if the missions availed themselves of the privilege, always available in the Terri tories, of using “moon” boys (casual labour) to the exclusion of indentured.

ALL fair-thinking laymen are willing to admit that the missions are potentially a power for native good.

But the majority of laymen will not admit that the Melanesian shows any visible signs of improvement through contact with missions, as such.

The perpetual crv of the reformer that the native should be helped towards becoming a better native, that he should be instructed in agriculture and health measures, we all endorse. But the results achieved in these reforms, bv missions or anyone else, are to date indiscernable to the naked eye.

I have met dozens of time-finish mis sion boys, as far inland as the Sepik plains, and never once have I seen one refinement or improvement in native life, due to any training they may have received.

Gardening, house-building, animal hus bandry—if you can call the raising of native pigs that—all go along precisely in the same fashion as thev have since time immemorial. The only difference between a mission boy and anv other, under those circumstances, is that the mission boy will usually try to charge you a shilling for a coconut, while his more

unsophisticated brother, if he happens to like the cut of your jib, might ask you to drink one of his coconuts “on the house.”

These things are not the fault of the missions, but have their answer in the fundamental make-up of the Melanesian, who even when semi-sophisticated, sees all things through the eyes of his Stone Age environment.

Nothing in my own limited experience, nor in that of others with whom I have spoken, leads me to a belief that any of the qualities one seeks in one’s fellows — honesty, industry, courtesy, kindness, loyalty—are to be found more frequently in a mission boy than in one who is straight from the bush.

The Melanesian can be taught, but it is a slow process. For every bright intel-

ligence there are nine hundred and ninety-nine who, if they work at all, do so for some specific native reason, quite divorced from European learning of any kind. And what little knowledge they do acquire by accident, is forgotten as speedily as possible once they return to their native environment, If the indentured labour system teaches the native nothing, then I and many more like me, have yet to learn what benefit the ordinary run-of-the-mill Melanesian derives from a term at a mission. ... ... 11/fR. WARD, even if he achieves the same effect as the missionaries, is driven b y slightly different motives,

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He belongs to a group of theorists who presume that all men are born equal, and that if. after 30 years, some of them are down and out while others have improved their status—well, it is just a dirty capitalistic trick. He believes that if a man rises an hour earlier than his fel lows and works two hours later at night, so that in a few years he can afford to buy a car, then he is just a traitor to his kind: the fact that he has accom plished something is a matter of luck; and he should be kicked in the pants as often as possible for his presumption.

If, on the other hand, a man spends every Saturday at the races, and con sistently loses his wages, so that his wife and kids become a charge on the State and the man goes on the dole—then that’s just bad luck. He’s one of the down-trodden masses towards whom all social services should be orientated, and for whom the capitalist should be made

to cough up his iU-gotten gains.

By the same token, if a man goes to a primitive country like New Guinea with about ten shillings in his pocket and, through initiative and fortitude, makes good—then, again, the whole affair stinks. In Eddie’s simple philosophy, one can rise only on the necks of other humans.

The New Guinea native, as seen by Eddie, represents the down-trodden masses. He therefore must be freed from the bonds of “slavery.” If the Melanesian shows a strange reluctance to shake him self out of his bemused state, then he must be agitated a bit. He must be urged to unite, strike, show what he is made of. His *brown .hide, with which the good Lord saw fit to equip him, doesn’t mean a darned thing—unless he is silly enough to cherish an ambition to come to Australia.

And, come the revolution, he’ll call the tune while the planters dance. If they are lucky, some planters might get jobs as agricultural instructors. (See Mr. Bur

ton in May “PIM” on “What to Do With Planters When the Natives Take Over.’’) But, for the rest —well, we should worry.

OUR King’s Cross Minister has the well-known Australian complex that there is nothing to be learned out side the Commonwealth three-mile limit.

What’s good in The Cross is certainly good anywhere else. And it was with this in his mind that Eddie recently went cruising to New Guinea.

Even allowing for our Minister’s Bohemian habits, it has been a cause of some wonder just why he felt it neces sary to meet the natives with his pants rolled up and sans boots (May “PIM”); but now the reasons can be revealed!

It has been the custom in those parts, for long enough, that when ships anchor out, one is taken ashore in a surf boat, and carried the last few yards by a couple of not-unwilling natives. But, when a couple of brown sinewy arms were pre sented to Eddie, he is reported to have struck an attitude and said, “What —be carried ashore by a couple of my breth ren? Like a slave-driving planter? Me?

Not plurry likely! I’ll walk, like any decent, self-respecting Unionist.”

Thereupon, rumour hath it, he sat down on the gun’ales of the boat, peeled off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants, and plunged into the surf.

Eddie is an anachronism. He sees himself, not as a perambulating profes sional politician, as we do, but as a Crusader with a fiery sword; or as an Australian Abe Lincoln, freeing slaves.

Fate and John Curtin unfortunately cast him for this role when he could have been better employed tending to his knitting or making further military “disclosures.”

Now. there appears to be nothing to save the “slaves being freed” and Territorians from going completely nuts unless (1) Eddie is sent to New Guinea to spend a year working native labour; or (2) he is given another job.

The second seems the more likely

course, although there is small comfort in this for Territorians. Judging solely by public faux pas of recent months — which seem to be the only qualification necessary for the job of External Terri tories’ Minister —next in line is Minister for Information Calwell, whose control of censorship got Australia into world head lines a few months ago.

Mr. Calwell is as militantly “pink” as Edward J. Ward, and any truck with capitalists of the New Guinea order can scarcely be expected from that quarter, either.

IT might well be that Territorians, in view of all these besetting worries, should be bowed down under a load of woe. But they are an indestructible lot, having been exposed to the evil machinations of politicians from an early age, and grown some immunity. To-day. they realise, is the era of talk and hot air: to-morrow still may well be theirs.

Shorn of its wartime glamour. New Guinea is more than likely to be left to ffet on with the job of growing up; and this is a process that will require, not the advice of woolly-haired theorists, but the service of plain, ordinary citizens who can roll up their sleeves and get down to work.