Future Of Truk

"Bermuda of Pacific"?

From Our Own Correspondent papfftf inn ?

ONE radio commentator who broadcasts NE radio commentator who oroaocasts from the North American West Coast has expressed an opinion that the Caroline Island galaxy known as Truk is destined to become the Bermuda of the Pacific.

Anyone who knew the tranquil charm of those fascinating Atlantic islands dur mg the later years of the Nineteenth Century, and their subsequent trans formation as a popular tourist resort, may foreshadow the fate in store for Truk. Surely—under the law of compen sation, after 25 years of the unspeak able Jap these wretched Caroline Islanders deserve a happier destiny.

Bermudians, who bartered their tran quillity for a mess of pottage, lived to see their beautiful land become a sort of Coney Island. Later, every native of Bermuda able to do so, has packed his chattels and, with his family, has fled to Turk’s Island, in the Bahamas, or to some obscure dot in ’the West Indies, at the beginning of the tourist season.

To comprehend why tourism blights

every land it invades, one may find an explanation in the fact that average tourists come from lands where a per son’s importance in the community, his or her rank in §pciety, the standards of success or failure in the battle of life, are measured solely in terms of the coin of the realm. A tourist entering a strange country naturally wishes to- convey the impression that he is a person of conse quence in his native land, and spends accordingly. This awakens the cupidity which, apparently, sleeps in every human breast.

As tourism proceeds, this spirit of ac quisitiveness spreads, until the whole community becomes infected. In the end, the once tranquil, neighbourly native population—transformed as by a thirst for blood into a pack of preda tory high-binders—seek to prey on each other, as well as on the stranger within their gates.

To-day, the visitor to the South Paci fic Islands who is prudent with his purse, is looked upon with contempt and con signed to the classification of “Banana Tourist.”

Eleven Samoans and two part-Samoans have won NZ Government scholarships for 1945. They are to leave for New Zealand early in 1946.