Edit’L Note—Europeans Should

Insist On The Death Penalty

THE policy of the Australian Socialist Government is not to carry out the death penalty against white men; and, as it insists on putting the Papuan and New Guinea natives in the same category as white men, presumably it will not hang the murderers of Mr. Bowes.

If this should prove to be so. the Euro pean residents of the Territories should take steps to register the strongest pos sible protest against this kind of official stupidity. The majority of these natives are quite incapable of understanding the Brown Brother approach. Generally, in all our dealings with them, we must show strength and firmness amounting almost to ruthlessness; anything else is regarded by them as weakness. This is especially imoortant in relation to the protection of human life. Unless these people are shown, without any exception whatever, that the death penalty is imposed upon any man taking the life of another, Euro peans in the Territories will not be safe.

There has been too much weakness in the Administration in this respect in re cent years—and too many examples of an inclination on the part of young natives to show disrespect to white men.