Tragic Problem Of The Half-Caste

New Guinea Administration Takes One Blundering Step

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Pt. Moresby, Oct. 3.

HALF-CASTES were advanced a step closer to European status when it was quietly announced recently that they would be allowed to travel on buses provided for Europeans, provided they are reasonably dressed.

Moresby residents complained indig nantly when they found that half-castes were occupying seats while white women had to stand.

Some women said they feared that natives would have less respect for them once they saw them mingling with half castes.

People are wondering how long it will

be before half-castes are crowding the picture theatre, the dance halls and the hotels. Many residents realise that half castes will have to be accepted into the European community eventually, just as they have been in Australia; but resi dents say that this should be done only when the natives have been raised to a much higher standard. At present any effort to merge half-castes into the European community will result only in a serious drop in European prestige.

If Colonel Murray thinks this is un important, he should try to imagine his own reaction if one of his houseboys greeted him with cordial familiarity.

Environment, Not Mixed Blood, Is The Trouble

EDITORIAL NOTE. —There is far more than that to the social problem of the half-caste in the Pacific Islands. There are thousands of people of mixed blood in the score or more of Territories in the Pacific Ocean; and the great majority ot them are worthy folk, en titled on their personal qualities to take equal status of citizenship with Euro peans.

Of course, there are two classes of half castes. There are the products of formal unions between Europeans and natives — found mostly in Polynesia and Micro nesia—and these people brought up usually in European fashion, take then places in the community beside Euro peans, as a matter of custom and of right. There are very many people of mixed blood who now occupy influential positions in all the Territories from the New Hebrides eastward to Tahiti.

The other class—the often unhappy re sult of casual and irregular unions—is met with mostly in Melanesia. More often than not, the white father is either unknown, or is a low-class man who takes no responsibility for his off spring. These children often are left entirely to the care of the native mother and, except for missionary help are brought up as natives, and have only

native status and native outlook. They present an outstanding example of the influence of environment over heredity.

There are a number in Papua and New Guinea; and the European residents quite properly object to close association with them, except in particular cases.

As our correspondent says, the granting of European status to native-trained half-castes would only weaken the in fluence of the Europeans with the natives. The tendency must be resisted —quite enough harm has been done al ready by the intrusion of Socialist prin ciples and impractical Brown Brother concepts into tropical administration.

There is nothing at all disgraceful in the fact that one has mixed blood. Some of the most desirable people in and around the Pacific are the products of what has been called miscegenation.

There are few children more attractive, as a type, than the product of European- Polynesian unions—unless they are the products of Chinese-Polynesian unions, who usually are notable for intelligence, industry and good looks. Although the children of European-Melanesian unions are usually less desirable, anyone who knows the Western Pacific will have known half-castes who, in all the quali ties of good citizenship, are equal to the European, and are better than many.

The solution of the problem lies in the training of the individual half-caste baby. In Polynesia and Micronesia, where marriage between European and native is common, the child is given a European background; and, even if it grows up in a native community, its way of life is not so far removed from that of the poorer Europeans. The consequence is that it usually is socially acceptable and economically valuable.

When the half-caste child is left to grow up, without direction, in a primi tive Melanesian native community, it seldom is different, in mentality and social usefulness, from the natives. If it should be different in mentality, and made sensitive to the stigma of its birth and status, it can become socially dangerous and undesirable.

If the New Guinea Administration has any true understanding of the tragic problem of the half-caste, it will start much further back than is indicated by its new, flat-footed rule that half-castes shall have omnibus equality with Euro peans. It will sternly discourage all ex cept legitimate unions between whites and natives; and, if there should be un wanted illegitimate babies, then it will see that they are taken early into proper care and training, and given a chance to develop European status.