Quarantine For The

Senator

well-known M. Lasalle-Sere, who is . a Senator of France and an influen tial man in the South Pacific, has learned something of the exasperations which the Law can impose upon the ordinary citizen.

When the new Governor arrived the

other day in Tahiti, he learned that a lot of air-mail for French Oceania had accumulated at Aitutaki, in the Cook Group. (French Oceania has no air i service; and air-mail for that Territory ; cannot be taken beyond the Cook Islands by the British lines). So the French sloop Lotus was despatched to Aitutaki for the mail.

Senator Lasalle-Sere had been kicking his heels impatiently in Tahiti since he went there in the Orohena from Suva.

He was due in Paris, but he could not get away from Tahiti. So he took passage in the Lotus to Aitutaki, whence he could get by air to Suva, and thence by air to France.

But Aitutaki’s health officer was adamant. When the Lotus left Papeete, it was under quarantine in respect of some minor plague; and, in any event, Aitutaki was having a bout of influenza, which was quarantinable.

There were wild radio exchanges between Rarotonga, Wellington, Suva and Papeete; it was pleaded that the Senator simply had to get to Paris, and could not this unimportant quarantine be relaxed for once. The Health people were not (Sympathetic: the quarantine laws applied to everyone, whether Senator or slave.

The disgusted M. Lasalle-Sere was returned, unharmed, to Papeete. There, eventually, he got a berth on the Waihemo, which took him to Vancouver, and thence he went by air to France.

The Orient Line may revive its cruises from Australia to Fiji, Papua-New Guinea, Noumea, etc., in 1952 —God and Joseph Stalin willing. Islands cruises by Orient and P & O ships normally on the Australia-UK run were popular before World War 11.