Native Labourers?

SHOULD WHITE EMPLOYERS BE ALLOWED TO SMACK

By Robert Slade

THE case of John Breen McKenna, assistant director of the Native Labour Department of Papua-New I Guinea, convicted recently in Port Moresby of assaulting a native, directs attention to a matter that should have been dealt with, on Canberra level, long ago. The Eddie Ward policy of treating the New Guinea natives as Brown Brothers and gentlemen has been carried to ridiculous lengths. It is time we had a stocktaking, in relation to this aspect I of native policy.

McKenna was charged with punching a native. He pleaded guilty to assault, but declared that he did not punch the man. He had directed the native to do some work: and the native did not do what he was told, and when reprimanded, he swore at the white man. McKenna thereupon had slapped the native’s face with his open hand.

This was a misdemeanour. Since the Socialist Utopia was introduced to Papua- New Guinea, one may not lift a finger against Brown Brother. The useful old habit of applying the toe of a lively shoe to the native’s stem is now in a category close to murder. As a result, the sophis ticated salt-water native has become arrogant, cheeky and almost unmanage able.

There have been many cases, in Papua- New Guinea, in the last two or three years, of Europeans of good status and reputation, being prosecuted for so-called assault upon natives.

There was, for example, the fine im posed for assault, in Kavieng, upon Captain Finnelly, of the 300-tonner Karu.

Finnelly had oftimes been criticised by his fellows for pampering his native em ployees; his friends pointed out that his natives abused his generosity and re garded his patient kindness as weakness.

The day came when the Captain could answer a native’s impudence only by giving him the hiding that was long overdue. His record made no difference: they fined him £l2.

The law, as they have it now in these Australian Territories—and in most other Pacific Territories —is an absurdity.

THE New Planners of the post-war generation would have it that there is no essential difference between races. The theory is enthusiastically presented and developed in the last issue of the magazine published by the Aust ralian School of Tropical Administration.

From that base the Planners have now got native administration policy to the point where relations between Europeans and natives in New Guinea must be the same as between employers and employed in Australia. Nowadays, in Papua-New Guinea, if a native employee is diso bedient or cheeky or offensive, you must proceed against him by civil process, or call for the police.

The majority of Europeans in charge of natives simply cannot be bothered with either civil court or police. When they find it necessary, they use their hands, or a handy stick, to knock respect, and some sense of the fitness of things, into the usually stupid head of Brown Brother; and, if they are “reported” for it, and come officially under the notice of some Government servant, they must just grin and bear it.

Fortunately, most of the officials in Papua-New Guinea are sufficiently realist to deal properly with the situation, and the great majority of slapped faces and kicked behinds never reach the sanctity of a court. And no harm is done there by. There are very few Europeans in Papua-New Guinea who will strike a

native without good reason, or from sheer bad temper. Most of them have a very clear sense of noblesse oblige, and govern their conduct accordingly.

These dark-skinned people of Melanesia —and, in fact most of the Pacific Islanders —recognise, above all, the quali ties of strength and firmness. Let the white man be just and strong, and ready at any time to assert his authority, where necessary, with a resounding wallop, and he will hold the respect and willing obedience of every native from Wau to Aitutaki, and from Noumea to Nauru.

Even a little man, if he has a straight eye and a ready fist, governed by a sense of strict justice, will enjoy perfectly satisfactory relations with natives; while the man who tries to rule them with cajoleries and empty threats, no matter how big he is, will suffer endless humilia tion and trouble.

THESE Planners say there is no funda mental difference in race, and try to introduce their theories into ad-

I ministrative laws, as in I Guinea. Ninety-five per cent, of Euro- I peans who have had to live among I coloured people in Asia or Africa, or the [lslands, know the absurdity of that claim.

Biologically, yes—there is no difference, f Caucasian can mate with Mongol, or Negroid with Caucasian, or with any of their mixtures. But in the non-physical things, character and temperament, there is a world of difference; and in the qualities which make for good citizen ship and human progress (according to our standards) the North European is better than the South European; and the European generally is in advance of the Asiatic and the Negro.

I can almost hear the screams of wrath with which such an opinion will be received by the New Planners of the post war period; but a lifetime of experience and observation has convinced me of its truth.

Standards change. Perhaps, two or three centuries from now, the unwritten rules which govern human life and human relations will have moved in favour of the standards to which non- European races conform. I have been speaking of the standards of present-day Western Civilisation, under which the human race has made phenomenal pro gress in the last few hundred years.

And I am discussing the average man of the various races. There are many men among the Indians of Asia, or the Negros, or Mongols, who are equal in quality to the best that Caucasia ever produced: just as there are, in Europe, human types as low as the lowest in Africa or Asia. I can name Chinese, and Polynesians, and Indonesians, whom it is an honour to know. I have seen, in a London slum, white derelicts as loath some as the coloured scum of Port Said.

ABSOLUTE equality is as impossible in inter-racial relations as it is between classes in even the most highly civilised white State. There must always be a governing section, and a governed.

Men may be bom equal, in their claim to personal freedom and all the privileges of citizenship. But men are never born equal in the qualities which constitute leadership. Some are bom to lead, and the mass are intended by nature to con form to leadership. Any attempt to escape from those fundamental laws—and the whole world to-day is cursed with such experiments—leads inevitably to social confusion and economic trouble.

SO, by a wide circle, we come back to our starting-point: the absurdity of the attempt to apply the laws of common British citizenship to a primitive Melanesian community. We have a duty to these people: to give them medical

service, to provide them with means for acquiring literacy .to . assist them to higher standards of living, and to teach

£e m how n^SrrJSv

e rcJowded worid Buf ff we pamp ? ?hlm we defSt oiir own’ ends pamper aeieal our enas ' .We have a very long way to go, in those directions, before we reach the

fhSa

our Ssf our planters a

biiSocks of a recaYcitrant

nttive buttocks of a recalcltrant ‘ Sister Mary Wellington, of Sydney,

‘doctors' A an“nurses° who

are doing maternal and baby-welfare work among the natives. Part of her work will be to travel around among vil lages and instruct mothers in hygiene and babv care.