Polynesians Are

Threatened With Nakedness

BECAUSE of stupid, bureaucratic inter ference in a trade which the bureau crats know nothing about, the natives of Polynesia are in danger of nakedness.

In spite of everything the merchants can do there is not enough cloth coming for ward to provide the natives with the wrap-around garment called parieu in the Cook Islands, and lava-lava in most other places.

Officialdom always has frowned upon the wearing of trousers—civilisation’s most hideous garment—by Islanders.

When the Europeans came, the natives kept their parieus, but changed from native material to cotton. They used millions of yards annually.

Now, the world is short of cotton, and supplies generally are rationed. In most places, authority is using its common sense, and sufficient cotton lengths are being issued to natives to allow them to carry on.

But the New Zealand Government, re sponsible for Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, is strictly rationing the cotton goods which are being shipped from Britain to those groups—so that the cloth which now is going to the Poly nesians of Samoa and Cook Islands is not nearly enough to provide the people with their needs, even on the most con servative basis. And there is no substi ..„s. it must be cotton cloth—or nothing.

Most urgent representations are still being made to New Zealand. But the omcials there seem to think that if they ration their own people in cotton goods, iney should similarly ration their Islander.

Their rule-of-thumo minds cannot grasp iu fact that the NZ population have various alternatives to cotton goods—the Islanders have none.