Indian Or Fijian?

A Problem for the Employer of Labour

Letter to the Editor IDO not agree with some of the state ments which you have published in regard to the Indians in Fiji. In some issues, you have suggested that the In dians should be shifted back to India.

If that were done, what would happen to plantation-owners who need labour?

Fijians are irresponsible and lazy, and will not work. They expect to be paid a full day’s pay for a third of a day’s work —and that badly done —except when cut ting copra on piece-work. They also are cheeky and dishonest.

I would sell out and return to New Zealand if I could not employ Indians or Solomons—the latter are the most re liable labour I have worked in the Fiji islands. I refer to the older Solomons— the younger generation are on a par with the Fijians.

I notice in your March issue that you anticipate trouble among the Indian cane growers. It seems to me you are trying to foment trouble in Fiji by keeping this Fiji-Indian pot boiling, and making great play about the Fijians’ super-war-effort.

Far be it from me to make unpleasant re marks about anyone’s war effort—but why not forget all this, and let us try to have some peace? Surely there is enough trouble all over the world, most of it perhaps Communist-inspired, without making more here.

Anyone, to really write about labour conditions in Fiji ought to have resided on and worked a plantation for a few years—he would have a better under standing of the mentality of the different races here.

I am, etc.,

J. Price.

Savu Savu, Fiji.

EDITORIAL NOTE: We have not ad vocated the removal of the Indian popu lation from Fiji, because we know that that is quite impracticable. We merely mentioned that plan as offering about the simplest solution of a problem that grows progressively worse. There are various alternatives—all difficult. Many practical, highly respected planters like Mr. Price share his views, exactly; but how many of them are prepared to con template life in Fiji as an Indian colony?

Yet that is quite a possibility. The In dians already are howling for it; and the Bloomsbury Socialists who now control the British Government, if they are re

turned to power next October, are quite capable of surrendering Fiji, Ma\iritius, and one or two other islands similarly circumstanced, to “the Republic of India” . . . We surely have no wish to stir up trouble in Fiji. But neither do we wish to see the responsible citizens of Fiji ignoring the danger disclosed in the census figures, and in the Indians’ ceaseless political activities.