Mr. Quentin Pope In The

South Pacific

AN unwelcome type of journalist, Mr, Quentin Pope, of the “Chicage Tri bune,” has been visiting most of the Territories of the South Pacific re cently, and has dispatched from most of them the kind of article beloved by the notorious proprietor of the “Tribune”, Colonel McCormick—highly coloured, sensational, irresponsible and viciously anti-British, Mr. Pope was in the British Solomon Islands in February and, despite official coldness, he managed to find accom modation of some kind in that war-torn place and to file a few hundred words fairly frequently for the Chicago muck sheet.

Mr. Pope turned up in Rabaul late in February, spent a few days there; and on March 7 he flew across to Port Moresby.

The industrial chaos and depressing conditions created in Papua-New Guinea by the Socialist-planning Australian Min ister Ward provide any alert journalist with plenty of copy. Had Mr. Pope been a responsible journalist, one could have regarded his appearance in these Terri tories with equanimity—for the sake of their future, the Territories cannot get too much publicity. But it is a deplor able thing that they should be presented to Mr. Pope, as a gift ready made for his peculiar talents. He can be expected to make full use of his special technique— all the high colours and exaggerated nastiness of the professional Anglophobe —and to paint a dismal picture of these British Territories, without telling one solitary lie.