Tourists Caused Loss of "Face"

"Face"

Position of Europeans in the Pacific

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Mar. 20.

A COMPANY of us who have read and studied Mr. Quaritch Wales’s book “Years of Blindness,” are so much impressed with it that we believe it should be perused by every student of Oriental affairs.

The work is not one of those noisy, muck-raking, opinionated volumes which have been pouring from the press during the past years; but a quiet, thoughtful account of things as they are, by a scholarly Englishman who has lived the major part of his life in Oriental coun tries.

The average Europeatn has not the smallest conception of .how the white man has lost “facte” during the past twenty years, although it is evident enough, here in the islands, to anyone who has eyes to see, and ears to hear.

Mr. Quaritch Wales tells us how it has come about in Malaya, Siam, Indonesia and India—and why.

It is remarkable how the attitude of Europeans (especially of the female of the species) toward the South Sea Islands has changed. With the exception of a few of us who have lived here so long that our roots are deeply established, every white man and woman we know is eager to get away—to anywhere fhat is not another South Sea Island.

The white man’s loss of “face” in the islands is mild compared with that which has befallen him in the Orient.

Those countries, with their hundreds of millions inhabitants, are likely to become a “powder magazine” beside which the Balkan States of Europe will appear in history as a damp squib.

The Hindu in South Africa and m Fiji; the threat of statehood for Asiatic Hawaii, which will imperil the Pacific Coast Commonwealths of the United States; Chinese economic hegemony in Malaya, Oceania, Indonesia; European tourism of the type which has prevailed in the past; the exploitation of natural resources of Asiatic lands for the en richment of the foreigner; are a few of the problems that must be appraised realistically if the Caucasian has any wish or hope of regaining some measure of “face” and to establish peace and goodwill in the vast areas of the Pacific and Asia. rE tourism of the notorious 1920 de cade most certainly destroyed Cau casian prestige in the Pacific. As it has been here, it has surely been else where, so I list it as one of the major factors in loss of prestige in the lands of Asia.

The well-bred traveller is, to be sure,

a welcome visitor in any country. It is the common "tripping” tourist who has caused all the trouble. Tahiti suffered from this latter type to saturation; so did Java and Bali; and so, we must believe, did Asia.