No Mission Competition

In New Guinea

Letter to the Editor IN the Pacific Islands Monthly of Jan uary your columnist Tolala refers to the fact that the Baptists are beginning work in New Guinea.

While I fully agree with his remarks regretting the evils of mission competition; and while I also fully agree that out of consideration for the natives, zoning should be observed, I feel that it is un fortunate that the announcement of the arrival of the Baptists in New Guinea should be the introduction of this subject.

One cannot fail to get the impression that, somehow, the Baptists are connected with this regrettable situation.

Protestant missions in New Guinea have, as far as I know, always been in favour of zoning, or “sphere of influence”.

That is also so with the Baptist mission aries. I say this from personal knowledge.

They are our “neighbours” here in the Central Highlands. Before they began work they came to us, informing us where they l , intended to establish themselves, and seeking mutual agreement on bound aries between our fields. Though we had originally regarded the area they selected as one of our future fields of expansion, we have reached a friendly understanding.

From the foregoing your many readers, especially missionaries, will be assured that our Baptist friends are doing their utmost to avoid the evils of mission competition which Tolala rightly deplores.

I am, etc.

A. P. H. Freund.

Lutheran Mission, Wabag, New Guinea.