Big Business

The Planter and The Missionary

Letter to the Editor BELATEDLY, I should like to comment on two articles—one by Mr. Leslie F. Gill and one by Mr. D. G. Ken nedy—in the September issue of the “PIM.” Both articles were very interest ing from the Solomon Islands point of view.

Mr. Gill’s article is particularly so, as he has, over a long period of years, been full of sound commonsense; but why does he have to slate missionaries and mis sions?

Granted that the two reverend gentle men who have been so bitter in their press writings about the indentured sys tem of native labour knew very little about it, but they have had no experience of present-day New Guinea, Papua or

Bsi.

Mr. Gill’s experiences may have been unfortunate, but the average missionary (be he RC, C. of E. of SSEM) is not “self-centred, and immersed in a very restricted and narrow orbit’; neither is he “brave, ignorant, publicity-hunting.’’

Why should the missionary ‘attack the

local combines”? And missionaries should surely be allowed to “work in with” those same “local combines” if they wish. One can feel the venom in the writer’s spite ful remark that missionaries “curry favour with them.” Mr. Gill should know that that is not done.

Mr. Gill should also know that “ex plqiting, gin-sodden traders and rapacious planters” is not a remark used by mis sionaries as a whole, of their trading and planting friends. Missionaries nowadays are not so ignorant of plantation and commercial life. Mutual respect between them and thei*- planter neighbours often becomes real friendship and thus helps both Europeans and natives. It is quite possible for a missionary to be on good terms with Government officials, with members of the Big Firms, and at the same time to be true to his God and to the mission he serves.

MR. KENNEDY’S letter is of quite another calibre, and with much of it the average missionary will be in general agreement. But one wonders how Mr. Kennedy can write of the Solomon Islander in peacetime, when, if my mem ory serves me rightly, hei has only known the BSI in four years of war.

He, too, however, has little that is good to say of missions and missionaries. He probably knows little or nothing of them in non-war periods. His jibes at the reli gious bodies are not in good taste.

In RC and C. of E. villages the church building is never known as the school; the school is always a separate building. The village itself is known either as a school village or heathen village; but the church is always known by the native name for a sacred edifice —“luma aabu,” “vale tabu,” “ima we rqngo,” and the like.

The accustation that one mission has persisted for more than 70 years in the use of a New Hebridean dialect as a lingua franca for the Solomons is quite untrue. It is true, however, that from its earliest years until comparatively recently the Melanesian Mission has used the Mota language as its teaching medium in its central schools; it is still used to some extent. No attempt has ever been made to foist this language upon the islands in general; but the value of Mota from an educational and evangelising point of view cannot possibly be gauged.

Thousands of Melanesian boys and girls have been taught in Mota, and returned to their own or neighbouring islands and villages to teach in their own languages what they have learned in Mota.

The statement that the natives make a two-faced Janus of Christianity and their old superstitious philosophy is definitely untrue of the great majority of native Christians. They embrace Christianity wholeheartedly; the village church becomes the centre of their life; morning and evening prayers become the norm: and their lives gradually become modelled, however, imperfectly, on the teachings of Christ.

As I said previously, there is much in both articles with which one heartily concurs: but one wishes that the mis statements had not been made.

Certainly the BSI native is not down trodden or enslaved: certainly he, with all planters and traders, is entitled to a fair deal: and certainly he is as loyal as any other Britisher to our Empire and our King.

I am, etc.,

F. R. Isom.

Melanesian Mission Press, Sydney.

December, 1944.

Mr. J. Windrum, District Commissioner of the Northern District, recently left Fiji on leave.