Background of
p. 25 · Read in the full issue
Islands Administration
“fTIHE halting and belated recognition X that social policy has an economic context leaves the observer with the impression that New Guinea policy has in the last two years been dominated by humanitarian conceptions of a bare and abstract sort.
“However, there is a danger that unless benevolent intentions are brought into relation with economic realities they will prove sterile, and Australia will face the charge of failing to meet her obligations, not from lack of goodwill, but from im maturity in the conduct of her public affairs.
“The development of the Islands is in every way a formidable undertaking, bristling with difficulties before which the best informed are the most tempted to quail. We have yet to show that we can mobilise the resources —financial, techni cal, political and imaginative—required by both the obligations of trusteeship and the future needs of security. The penalties for failure are now much greater than in the past.” (In other —and more plain and brutal —words: Australian Planners are making a pretty poor job in New Guinea, and unless they get down to realities the failure of their administration there is going to prove embarrassing for Aus tralia.) The foregoing extract is from a book, “Trusteeship in the Pacific”, just pub lished (10/6) by Angus and Robertson, Sydney, under the auspices of the Aus tralian Institute of International Affairs.
Dr. A. H. McDonald, Professor of Ancient World History at Sydney Uni versity, has edited this compilation, and written some of its best passages, and his contributors included Mr. J. P.
McAuley, MA, lecturer in Colonial Ad ministration at the Australian School of Pacific Administration; Mr. T. Inglis Moore, MA, lecturer in Pacific Studies, Canberra University; and Mr. John M.
Ward, MA, lecturer in History at Sydney University and author of a unique and extremely valuable recent book, wherein he gives a complete and well-documented history of “British Policy in the South Pacific”.
Since the British Empire became more or less Socialist, the world has suffered —and still is suffering—cruelly from academic planners and impractical dreamers: and I confess that I picked up this book with trepidation—a feeling that was not lessened when I noticed that the back of the dust-cover carries an almost grovelling adulation of that international pain-in- the-neck, Dr. H.
V. Evatt. However, some at least of these writers and compilers have kept their feet on the hard earth, and recog nised, in relation to Pacific Islands administration, that something more is called for than idealism and benevolent intentions.
The book has great value for all students of Pacific affairs, because it gives a precise and reliable history of the Mandates plan, which has been merged into the Trusteeship system; and it is well documented and carefully indexed.
No man could deal in an authoritative way with the present condition and probable future condition of the Pacific Islands unless he has these facts at hand for ready reference.
Few people who take a realist view of Asia and the Asiatics will agree with some of the arguments and conclusions reached by these writers. But they have all assembled their facts very thoroughly and honestly, and in that alone they have given us a really valuable book.