We Call It Civilisation

Another Story in Rhyme by "Tolala."

I JOURNEYED through the Old Lands of the West; admired the works of art, the treasure chest of all the world; sculpture, cathedrals grand: the costly tapestries, all worked by hand; the monu ments to God, built up* in stone six hun dred years ago when man alone handled the massive columns marble blocks, and hewed with simple tools the solid rocks.

I saw the pfav-grounds of the Idle Rich: The tables green, where Chance, that fickle witch, will take or give a for tune in one play; the cabarets where Night is turned to Day. And then I saw some great industrial spheres, where men and women worked for sunless years at bench and lathe, ’mid grime and sweat and dust, earning the wage to buy the daily crust.

But in the larger cities where I went I saw much poverty and discontent: Men idle, for they had no work to do; chil dren hungry, ill-clad and homeless, too; women with frightened eyes and hollowed face; they seemed half-human.

A nation’s disgrace to have such wealth spent on material things—a peal of bells; angels with golden wings—when babes were dying for the want of food This was the world’s Great Nation’s attitude' God’s servant with his fifteen thousand pounds . . . Five hundred for the up keep of the hounds ... A banquet at two pounds ten a cover . . a fiftv guinea ring for some lover. Yet in Pop lar a score of babies died, and ten mothers committed suicide because there was not food to feed them all. (Five hundred guineas for the Lord Mayor’s Ball) -

I LEFT the cities, for they made me sad; somewhere our modern social system had stripped a few cogs from off its vast machine, else novertv like this would ne’er have been.

I journeyed East unto the Southern Seas, where tropic monsoons bend the tall palm trees; and there I found a race of Islands Polk, as yet untrammelled by the Whiteman’s yoke. To all appearance healthy and intelligent. I lived among them for a little while, and learned their habits and their native style of living where their every need was found around about them: in the sea or ground; and, like the people of my own white race, they had their treasures and this Tabu Place wherein their sacred spirits hid from view, and could be seen by only iust a few; not so unlike some of our Christian sects, except that God—so we are told—expects rare costly furnishings where He does dwell, not decorations wrought in wood and shell.

They had their dancing and their sing ing place; not like the cabarets of my own race, but underneath the palms, with fireflies bright illuminating with spasmodic light, the sweetly-scented coloured jungle trees, that swayed so gently to the warm, soft breeze that came across the calm, deep, blue lagoon; while riding high, the Lady of the Moon looked down between the tree-tops as they dance.

This true exotic scene, should it by chance appear in London, would become the rage but cost a thousand pounds, at least, to stage. But here the tropic night be comes the day, nor have the dancers any thing to pay; so unlike cabarets in

Western spheres with their strong spot lights and big chandeliers, the native dancers have the palmleaf flame. Only the music is somewhat the same, with syncopating tom-toms beating low, and sinuous bodies writhing as they go; no class distinction in the native dance; no socialites, or riches come-by-chance, just one big, happy, dancing, singing band, each one like any other in the land; no workless men, no children underfed; no hollow-eyed, sad women, nearly dead.

In wild, uncultured folk I did not find the social error of my cultured kind.

With all the centuries of learned art, and highly-lauded philanthropic part the white race plays in modern culture’s game we most assuredly should earn great fame. But I have found that this is not the case as, in my journeyings from place to place, I have looked here and there and everywhere to study life and laws and atmosphere; I’ve found that all the Wisdom of the West has failed to give its people what is best. Condi tions are good for “better classes” but do not extend to all the masses. The Islands native, with his “savage” laws, has really done more for the human cause by doing less than any other race: He puts all men upon an equal base, and his simplicity of social code enables him to reap just what he sowed. No intri cate complexities to cloud the issue that applied to all the crowd of men and women in that tropic land. A pity that we could not understand their simple methods better than we do, and so have economic freedom, too.

Rabaul, 11/8/45.

Mr. Harold Coldham was in Rabaul, NG, in September. He intended to visit his plantations on Witu Island