Plea For Leonard

Murray

Ex-Official's Frank Speaking

TWO columns of the Bundaberg news paper were given over recently to a report of an address before the Rotary Club by Mr. A. L. Ethell, formerly an ADO under the New Guinea Adminis tration, and now a planter in Eastern Papua.

Mr. Ethell pulled no punches. He told of tne early panics in Port Moresby— how Port Moresby was deserted when a false air-raid alarm was given in January, 1942; how the Australian troops looted the town about the same time, and did over £1,000,000 damage in one hectic night; how Canberra, per medium of the Barry inquiry, contrived to get rid of the well loved Leonard Murray; and the facts be hind the “Fuzzy-wuzzy angels,”

“Never has so much been written about a country by so many who knew so little” remarked Mr. Ethell, aptly.

He described the present method of awarding War Damage compensation to the natives (at the Australian taxpayers’ expense) as “the greatest racket I have ever known.”

“While the present regime continues in New Guinea, goodness knows what the country will develop into . . . There is only one thing that will save Papua to day, and keep the natives from develop ing into a degenerate race, and that is the return of the one man who really knows them Leonard Murray. Until he goes back and theorists and idealists have no more say in the direction of New Guinea affairs, we are going to have there only a race of people who depend purely and simply on the Government.”