The Islands

The Best Book Yet On The Islands Furnas, Clever American Writer, Produces Something Unique

THE Pacific Islands have a literature of their own. Hundreds—probably thousands—of books have been written about the Islands and the Islanders—their origin, history, social systems, morals, quaint ways and peculiar habits. Persons have been known to go into libraries, fasten onto the Pacific section—and come away after a month or two literally staggering under a load of unrelated and more or less indigestible data.

This is an age of short cuts and time saving. And here is the book of books, which will give you, in one volume, what otherwise you might have spent months in gathering from a hundred wearisome treatises. It is accurate, unexaggerated, well-written, presented in a really en tertaining form and —most precious of all —it is most copiously indexed.

Do you want to know what the first mis sionary in Hawaii thought of the easy going ladies who slept with white sailors; or why the people of Lord Howe Island always observed Thanksgiving; or why Cook should not have called Tonga the Friendly Islands; or why the cannibals ate women, but never allowed their women to join in the feasts; or how much African negro there is in the make up of the Melanesian; or how “Nativ ophiles” make fools of themselves; or why “South Seas” is used so confusingly; or who introduced the Islanders to the art of copra-making; or where Western Samoa is heading, or what anthropology has done for the South Pacific; or the answer to a hundred other intriguing questions? Then all you do is turn to this excellent, friendly index, and you’ve got it in two minutes —and usually with the name of the authority quoted.

This new book is “Anatomy of Paradise”, by J. C. Furnas, one of the most gifted of the younger school of American writers. It is published by William Sloane Associates Inc., , New York, at 5 dollars. It contains over 500 pages and a large section of illustrations; and it supplies most of the information about “the Islands” that anyone in the world, whether casual inquirer or fussy scientist, would want to know.

According to the “sources” which he quotes, Mr. Lucas has consulted over 500 authors and read over 1,000 books; and he has extracted the juice from them all, and served it up most entertainingly. He deals with all the Pacific Islands, but he has given much of his research to Polynesia and Micronesia, and especially to Hawaii. Apart from Fiji—which gets a large section —there is not a great deal about Melanesia.

MR. FURNAS—as befits one whose book carries the blessing of the Institute of Pacific Relations—has little that is good to say about the white people who were first into the Pacific Islands. He uses the early missionaries mostly for purposes of entertainment; and he usually sneers good-naturedly at the profit motive —although it was private enterprise, motivated by the age-old eagerness] for gain, which tamed and civilised the Pacific Islanders, just as it conquered the North American wilder (Continued on Next Page )

ness and established the mighty United States.

It is a clever book, because the author makes his points so effectively, and ef fortlessly. It is a compendium of all that is best in what has been written about the Islands —I am filled with ad miration for the slickness with which hundreds of quotations from innumerable authors are dropped in, .exactly in the right places.

And it is a somewhat disturbing book, because this author, with the facile cynicism that is so rapidly undermining and destroying the Old Order, has little to say in praise of what has been ac complished by people of his own race in the Pacific Islands, In practically every Territory there is a splendid record of achievement —monuments, in my humble opinion, to all that is best in the Old Order. But Mr, Furnas dismisses these things lightly. He does not use the word “exploitation”—but he clearly is on the verge of it, whenever he deals with European-Islander relations—that fact may limit the Usefulness of a great work. The book’s outstanding quality, however, will blind the average reader to that regrettable shortcoming.

IN many respects, it is the best book that ever has been written about the Pacific Islands. But why, O why, do publishers insist upon such dam-fool titles?

The late Dr. S. M. Lambert’s book, describing his remarkable accomplish ments in the Pacific Islands, and easily the most readable Islands book of the decade, was called “A Yankee Doctor in Paradise”. And now this outstanding work of Furnas’s has to be called “Anatomy of Paradise.”

The Pacific Islands, as both Lambert and Furnas were at some pains to show,

bear no resemblance to Paradise, except in the fervid imaginations of those who have never seen them. I suppose the public has to be kidded along—how else could authors and publishers live! But it is a pity to cheapen a good article by putting a silly, gaudy and misleading wrapping around it—RWR.

The Rt. Rev. S. G. Caulton, Bishop of Melanesia, arrived by air in New Zealand on December 7, after attending the Lambeth Conference in London. He re turned to his headquarters in the Solomons in early January.

Soon after Mrs. Lucy Brodie and mem bers of her family (who were pre-war re sidents of Rabaul) returned to Lae, New Guinea, they lost literally all their pos sessions when their house,, about two miles out of Lae, was destroyed by fire.

They had taken considerable property with them from Sydney, and it was all uninsured. Mrs. Brodie is the manager of the Administration mess at Lae.

Mr. C. J. Smith, the newly-appointed principal of Queen Victoria School, arrived in Fiji last week. Mr. Smith has been a teacher in Mauritius, where there is a large Indian population.