In Fiji In 1911

A Forgotten Incident Brought Up To Date

Letter to the Editoi THE following is from a despatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, from Sir F. H. May, Gov ernor of Fiji, dated July 19, 1911: “Time and space do not permit of my traversing further Mr. Burton’s lucu brations. The facts I have adduced are, 'I think, sufficient to stamp Mr. Burton as a careless and untrustworthy critic.”

A copy of the despatch came recently into my hands. It is interesting now— -38 years after it was written—because the Mr. Burton referred to is the Rev.

J. W. Burton, DD, former head of the Methodist Missionary Society, and now one of Australia’s two Delegates to the South Pacific Commission.

It appears that Mr. Burton, then a Methodist missionary in Fiji, wrote a book, “The Fiji of To-day”, wherein he purported to describe the conditions under which Indian indentured labourers lived and worked. Mr. Burton made highly sensational charges, in which the terms “absolute slavery”, “most insanitary con ditions and indescribable and disgusting filth”, “sickness and disease hold carni val”, “one of the saddest and most depressing sights a man can behold is a coolie line in Fiji”, “dirt filth and wild stenches abound, wickedness flaunts it self unashamedly”, and so on, are used.

The new Governor was much upset by these charges, and he made it his first business to inquire concerning them.

He then wrote the despatch referred to, in which he scathingly dismissed Mr.

Burton’s charges. “He seems capable of more than mere looseness in stating facts, and to be so gullible as to be a very untrustworthy channel of information”, is one of the Governor’s sentences.

The Rev. Dr. Burton had a good deal to do with the framing of the Evatt- Ward policy in Papua-New Guinea. His son, another Doctor, is the official head of Dr. Evatt’s Department of External Affairs; and he, as Dr. Evatt’s nominee,

represented Australia at the Conference recently in Delhi on Indonesian matters, wherein Australia is so staunchly sup porting the Indonesians against the Dutch.

In the circumstances, it will be inter esting to see the attitude of the Aus tralian section of the South Pacific Com mission towards the critical problems developing in Fiji as the result of the phenomenal growth there of the Indian population.

I am, etc:,

Old Historian.

Sydney, 26/2/49.