Island Mixed Marriages
p. 71 · Read in the full issue
Letter to the Editor YOUR Rabaul correspondent, in PIM of May, expresses a certain dis pleasure—the general opinion, pre sumably, of the white community—at marriages in his locality between white men and native or Chinese girls, and a similar union with a half-caste.
May I suggest that he is unwise in criticising these unions? Nowadays, with European women defeminised into a sort of sham male addicted to tobacco and alcohol, it is highly likely that the more natural behaviour of the ladies of allegedly inferior racial category attracted the lonely planter, who might not expect any woman of his own race to live out of reach of a cocktail bar or dance-hall, nor to share with him any of his hard ships.
What needs considering is that the Territorians concerned wedded girls of the Territory. From Nature's point of view, this may be a more satisfactory arrangement than a marriage between a white man and a white woman. Neither is an attractive Asiatic girl, with the inbred modesty and obedience of Eastern women, to be despised as a life-partner.
In the last analysis, white men do not marry white women because they will not come to the lonely outposts of civilisa tion. And that is not the Territorially fault —let the women of his race regain their ancient pioneer-spirit and settle in the Territories; and then men will marry them rather than natives.
I am, etc..
Edwin Gold.
Mangaia, Cook Island.
July 20. [ED. NOTE. —Mr. Gold speaks with the viewpoint of Polynesia. The position is quite different in New Guinea, where tnere are adequate reasons why European men do not marry native women. There were few, if any, European-Chinese marriages in pre-war New Guinea, not because of European discrimination but because neither party desired it. More over, there is no dearth of pioneering women in New Guinea (or Australia); soifie of them, widowed in the last war, are now running their own plantations in isolated areas. Morally, the record of Europeans in the New Guinea territories has been exceptional—consequently the half-caste problem there, in comparison with other Pacific territories, is virtually nil].