Not Pidgin!

Teach Them English, Not Pidgin!

Jj'ROM an AIF chaplain who has returned to Papua from active service further north : IT will be a welcome change to speak a language, a real language, instead of this hybrid conglomeration of crudi ties known in the aggregate as Pidgin. In spite of its advocates and apologists, and perhaps for the very same reasons as move them, I think the time has come for these New Guinea and New Britain natives to learn to speak and understand real English, however simple.

The whole crux of the pros and cons lies in the proposition that to teach them English is to open to them a whole litera ture, by which they can become educated in a wide field of knowledge. That is denied them when they are confined to Pidgin, or their own local language.

Rehabilitation of the native after the war is over cannot be conducted along the lines of suppression, since they have seen just what power lies in their own hands when organised as a fighting body Those who have the illusion that they can walk in, just where they walked out, are due for a pretty solid awakening.

Captain Viggo Rasmussen, who was recently removed from Penrhyn Island, Cook Group, following a physical break down, has been returned to Rarotonga, where he is being cared for at the gen eral hospital. He remains in a critical condition.