Tourists

Some Advice To

To Avoid Vulgarity in the South Seas

Ratatea, Nov. 12.

UNITED States soldiers, on duty abroad, were supplied with a book of instructions on how to behave in foreign countries.

Now that the tourist traffic to the South Seas is soon to be resumed, a few items of instruction on how to behave in Polynesia may be of value to pros pective travellers,

Pointers For Male Tourists

1- —Do not imagine that a Polynesian girl, who happens to be smiling when she glances at you, is a strumpet. South Sea Island girls are usually smiling at their own thoughts and are, probably, not thinking about you at all. Few Poly nesian women are strumpets—Hollywood and the crack-pot writers to the con trary, notwithstanding. 2.—lf you are looking for that sort of thing, go to the honky-tonks—that is what they are there for. But, if you do frequent the honky-tonks, bear in mind that the “thorn in the South Sea Rose” is quite as dangerous as the dorsal spines of the Nohu fish. 3 Do not barge, uninvited, into native compounds and houses. The charming South Seas hospitality you read about in books was bled to death by your pre decessors of the Notorious 1920 Decade. 4. —Do not twist bills of local currency into spills with which to light your cigar ettes. The native by-standers will not think you are a millionaire; but will con sider you an ill-mannered boor. 5. —Avoid the Islands male as you would the plague. He is usually a European who has lived in the South Seas long enough to have contracted a form of Cerebrosis, characterised by a progressive decay of the Cortex. The disease is highly infectious. 6.—When looking at light from a tropical moon glistening on the ripples of a Romantic Lagoon, keep well away from the coconut trees. Ripe coconuts are more likely to fall at night than in the day-time. Such a missile, landing on

one’s occiput—after a drop of 70 feet— will seriously damage romance. 7- —Bathing in the lagoon may wreck it irrevocably. The Nohu fish—half buried in the sand, the hollow needles of his dorsal spine poised to inject virulent venom into your foot—is lying in wait.

So are numerous other denizens—equally unpleasant. Prudent peope do not bathe in coral lagoons.

Advice To Women Tourists

1-—Never, never, never dance the Hula —unless you have a good working know ledge of the ribald colloquialism in the Polynesian language. You will then comprehend what the bystanders are saying, and will never repeat the per formance. 2. —Never appear in the costume of a Hollywood Bathing Girl on the public road of a South Sea island. Polynesian women never expose their bodies. They consider such exposure the height of vulgarity—again, Hollywood to the con trary notwithstanding. 3. —Never assume a superior air of patronage toward Polynesian women.

Bear in mind that Polynesian ladies trace their genealogy through genera tions of high chiefs, into the mists of time. You can trace your ancestry only to the Barbary Ape.

Advice To Both Men And

Women Tourists

1. —Good manners are the rule through out Polynesia. Do not, therefore, leave your own good manners at home in Gophers Corners, when you voyage to the South Sea Islands.—T.l.H.—(These initials represent the writers Polynesian name: Tauraatua-i-Hitia’a.) Major “Ted” Fulton, AIF, who was well known in New Guinea before the war, returned to Australia from Borneo in November. He enlisted a few weeks after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He served in the Middle East, Greece, Crete, New Guinea and, lastly, attached to the British Forces in Borneo.

He married a Melbourne girl early last year, and they now have a baby daughter a few weeks old.