The Brown Brother Complex

In South Pacific Administration

mHERE is no reason why the natives of J- the South Pacific Islands should not be assisted to take charge, eventually, of both the administrative and economic structures of their Territories. No one will argue, seriously, that there is not upon us an obligation to do everything within reason to raise the natives to that standard.

But there is no call upon us to do this thing in a hurry, now, while the world is passing through the most serious politico-economic sickness in its history.

The present haste of our Planners to confer full citizenship and political free dom and various other embarrassing privileges upon Brown Brother, is symp tomatic of the madness that is sweeping across half the nations of the world.

To give point to that contention, let us take a quick survey of conditions in the South Pacific Territories.

IN the Australian Territories of Papua and New Guinea, the fanatical Ward ist Administration is spending annually anything from £1,000,000 to £3,000,000 of Australian taxpayers’ money upon its plan for making a gentlemanly planter out of Fuzzy-Wuzzy, while it generally ignores the claims of the white planters, traders and miners for help and rehabi litation. There is a-considerable amount of economic distress in the Australian Territories, although the markets have never offered a higher price than they offer to-day for copra and gold—New Guinea’s two chief products. That is directly due to the confusion created in the Territories by Canberra’s bumble footed Socialist politicians.

Why did not the Australian Govern ment concentrate upon the urgent task of restoring New Guinea’s war-torn in dustries and re-establishing in their plantations, mines and stores the Euro peans who had suffered so much? Why did it treat the European claims with indifference, while assembling huge amounts of money and battalions of “experts” to undertake a grandiloquent scheme of educating and caring for the natives, for which there was no urgent demand? The answer is “Politics.”

Mr. Ward and his friends really are not particularly concerned about Fuzzy-

Wuzzy; but, as they always will seize upon any stick calculated to beat the dog they hate so much—poor old Private Enterprise—they were very glad of this chance to “put the boot into” the planters and traders and other natural enemies of Socialism.

IN the British Solomon Islands, as the result of the pusillanimous policy fol lowed by the British Colonial Office under Socialist direction during the past two years, a large section of the population of primitive natives is get ting out of hand. These Melanesians were disturbed by the Jap invasion; but they were far more deeply affected by their contacts with the half million or more of careless white servicemen who followed the Japs.

Their tendency to develop a form of nationalism was encouraged when the newly-arrived young men of the Col onial Office, instead of handling them with strength and commonsense, turned upon them the same kind of bleating goodwill as has destroyed British prestige in the Middle East and turned India into a shambles.

The British Solomons never had much economic value; but at least they could produce a lot of good copra, almost as useful as gold, in these unhappy days.

But the Colonial Office has been so pre occupied with its Brown Brother plans that it has done practically nothing to wards European rehabilitation in the group, and few, if any, planters have been re-established. Instead of the plan tations producing an increasing volume of copra to assist British trade in this crisis we have the spectacle of the Act ing High Commissioner flying hurriedly in from Suva to investigate the “March ing Rule” movement—which has been allowed to grow from some sort of vil lage mumbo-jumbo into a fanatical or ganisation with an apparent threat to the safety of Europeans.

The Solomons Fuzzy-Wuzzy is no more ready for self-government than is his New Guinea counterpart. We may not forget that, within the memory of men still living, these Melanesian communi ties were complete savages—treacherous head-hunters more often than not. Even our precious New Statesmen, now trying

to fasten Socialism in a day upon forms of national organisation which were evolved in a thousand years of indivi dualism, should not be so impractical as to imagine that they can, by babbling sweetly of brotherhood, turn the head hunter of yesterday into the smoothly functioning agriculturist of to-morrow. r RTHER east, in Western Samoa, we have the spectacle of the New Zealand Socialist Government rushing in with a plan for limited self-govern ment for the natives, while the Trustee ship Council mission is still struggling with another plan framed with the same objective.

Sooner or later the Samoans will get the self-government to which they are entitled by their good racial qualities.

Why this frantic hurry to equip them right now with some new form of ad ministration? Why now, while the world is convulsed with other problems—which call for all the genius of the white race, if a solution is to be found before com plete disaster falls upon Western civili sation?

Elsewhere in the Pacific there are other indications of the preoccupation of the London-Canberra-Wellington Socialists with native welfare —while the plight of millions of white people poses problems from which the Socialists more or less run away.

BUT, to see the real effect of Socialism’s Brown Brother complex, we must look at Asia and the Middle East. The things we see there are enough to bring black despair into the hearts of all good Britishers who are proud of their coun try’s glorious history and of her mag nificent, unequalled record in the field of colonial administration.

Our Socialists gave freedom to Egypt, after having saved that nation from the horrors of Nazi invasion. Ever since, the Egyptians have been screeching at the British over the Sudan, and spitting upon our flag.

Although warned by every man who knew Asia that our withdrawal would mean a holocaust, the British Socialist Government insisted on destroying our organisation in India and handing over all responsibility there to native govern ments. It was to be a Socialist gesture that would echo magnificently down the ages. The throat-cutting began in earnest within 48 hours of the embarka tion of our troops and, at this writing,

Hindus and Moslems are busily murder ing each other on an incredible scale.

There is a similar picture in the Neth erlands Indies. Holland, crippled partly by her Socialists at home and partly by the influence of the British Socialists, was unable for years to really deal with the situation created in Java by the Japs and the so-called Indonesian Re public. When finally the Dutch got to grips with that gang of noisy and treach erous rebels, they were checked by Soci alist influences exerted through the United Nations—a procedure in which Australia played a truly ignoble part.

To-day, the Dutch are trying valiantly to restore order in their vast Territory, and to put an end to the orgy of blood shed, oppression and robbery in which the rebel Javanese have indulged: but they are being embarrassed by constant interference from UNO.

WHY cannot the nations of the world understand that, for the majority of the coloured races, there is only one law which the masses understand —and that is the law of the clenched fist? We people of the West have learned, in a thousand years of social struggle, to accept the law of reason, f he force of moral obligation. But the majority of coloured folk have not yet reached this stage of human evolution —as they now are busily demonstrating in India, Java and elsewhere.

Of course, as human beings, they are entitled to complete freedom that is fundamental. But if their freedom means that, as in India, they create a reign of terror, or endanger the orderliness of the world, then they must be kept under restraint. And our point if that the majority of these coloured people have been quite properly kept under restraint by the Western nations; and they may be released from that restraint only very carefully and by degrees, as they prove themselves fit for nationhood.

These Socialist Governments are try ing to do in a year what properly can be accomplished, with care, in a cen tury.

ALL this hysterical concern for the welfare of Brown Brother will, in the end, do far more harm than good.

This flare-up of Socialist Government is a passing phase. It is part of the world’s post-war sickness, and it will dis appear presently. It will be replaced by sane and well-balanced administration which will be concerned, not with sec tions, but with the welfare of people as a whole; not with idealistic plans for educating Brown Brother and freeing him from the thraldom of the “exploit ers,” but in assisting the coloured races to form independent nations in such a way that they will not endanger the world’s peace and good government.

The spectacle of what is happening to day in the world will almost certainly induce the next series of Western Gov ernments, reacting against this orgy of Socialism, to reimpose upon the coloured races a grim discipline for their own good and the good of the world generally.

The pendulum that is pushed too far one way tends naturally to swing too far the other way. Mr. Ward should remem ber that in relation to New Guinea.