A Plea For The ‘Little People’

EDITORIAL NOTE.—Mr. Bambridge has given what appears to be a complete answer to the charge that the control of exchange by the French administration is not necessary.

But there is one class that is ignored by officialdom. If the number of inquiries received at the PIM offices is any criterion, there are in the world many thousands of modest people, with slender resources, who are desperately anxious to find, among the Pacific Islands, some pleasant place where they may escape the horrors of “modem civilisation.”

They want a place where they may be far off the tracks of snarling industrialists

and screeching politicians; where the climate is equable and where there are few tropical diseases; where people are friendly and happy, and a livelihood may be taken from a fertile soil with a mini mum of effort. French Oceania conforms to those specifications, and therefore that is the archipelago to which most of these inquirers would go.

But few of them have an income equal to 1,200 dollars a year—most of them have only a limited capital—enough perhaps to take them to Tahiti and establish them in some sort of a home. After that, they

would fend for themselves. However, the Government of French Oceania is not friendly to that kind of immigration. It acknowledges that the majority of such people probably would become admirable citizens—but the system would open the doors, once again, to a choice selection of the world’s loafers, who could be as much of a nuisance in the future as they were before World War 11.

It is a pity. Tahiti became world famous as a lovely, sub-tropical refuge for the “little people”; and there is a general wish that it should be so again.