Build Roads!
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
Sound Advice From New Guinea
From a Special Correspondent IAM not against anthropology, by any means; but one good road through a stretch of this New Guinea country will do more good in general than a dozen books on anthropology.
One cannot help but note the reaction of the natives to improved roads. The old up-and-down, go-as-you-please native trail, and the slightly improved “Gov ernment track,” leave about the same impression upon the native mind as they do upon the mind of the European. But when a good road is built they become deeply interested and take a pride in it and its graded curves.
I saw evidence of this again on a 30 miles’ trip recently, which took me out through the Aiyura Experimental Agri cultural Station to Omaura. It is a graded road over the Aiyura Ridge (now called Brechin Ridge, after the pioneer of the station, who lost his life in the war), and will care for a jeep nicely.
The natives were using it in their inter village travelling very freely, leaving their old-time pain-in-the-neck trails to be overgrown with kunal.
This country does not want too much idealism, but plenty of application of the practical—which is what counts most in this life, anyhow.
Young men training for prospective administrative service should have a simple course in road-making. In past times, men have entered the adminis trative service in these parts bringing with them fine scholastic attainments, but with no more idea nor inclination to
put in a good, simple, graded trail or road than the man in the moon.
I have time and again seen a patrol officer send a police boy out to do road making, which usually has turned out to be the expected thing—a real switch back railway type of job, which just adds another mile or so to the hideous “roads” so often seen. But if that same police boy could be given a long 4xl straight-edge, with a spirit-level attached, it would result in an in-and-out graded road—so simple to construct, and a de light to the eye. Even primitive natives are very quick to see reason in a graded type of road, but they can learn nothing from the type some administrative pat rolmen are so prone to allow, to follow the ups and downs of the kanaka trail.
To save over-crowding Japan at the moment, and to compensate for the appalling trail of ruin they have left in these islands, a few thousands POW’s could perform a great service in put ting through some good roads.