A Bachelor For Pago

Pago!

Samoans Do Not Approve The Unmarried State

From a Special Correspondent

San Francisco, Feb. 20.

THE new Civil Governor for American Samoa is Colonel Phelps Phelns, of New York. Already, he is on his way to the South Seas.

There was a tragedy connected with the minor nost. Mr. Sutherland, of Pasadena, was appointed deputy-governor and. with his wife and family, he was ready to de part by plane last Monday for Samoa, via Fiji and Apia, when on Sunday he suddenly died. No other appointment has yet been made.

THE Department of the Interior, in taking over administration of American Samoa, is placing a serious handicap on the prospect of good re lations with the people of Samoa by the appointment of a bachelor as their initial Governor.

Evidently Oscar Chapman, Secretary of the Interior, is not aware that this is an affront to the traditional culture and conventions of the Samoans. And evidently Colonel Phelps is equally un aware of the necessity of having a wife to share this high honour with him. He will find it difficult to gain the esteem of the Samoans, for they will be embarrassed for him, and formal occasions will be, to them, a manifestation of disrespect.

Even a woman member of his family, presiding at Government House up on the hill at Fagatoga, will fail to obviate this disregard for their requirements of good taste, and give him the dignity that would be his as the head of a family.

Being the head of a family is a Samoan man’s pride, from the time of early man hood, when he is given the title of matai.

Upon assuming this title he accepts a responsible place in village life- and is rated a better man, socially and politically, for having the counsel and companion ship of a wife. If by any unfortunate circumstance he has not a wife by the time he is elected to the high position of ali’i sili (chief) it is the duty of his orator (talking-chief) to find a wife for him.

In Samoan politics a bachelor has a weak voice and, socially, he has an inferior place. His single status stamps him as being without stability in their daily life, and thus denies him the respect of the people.

How far this matter of respect is tem pered by the fact that he possibly may be lax in moral rectitude is a question.

Their idea is, taking into account the inherent carnality of man, that it is more logical that a man lives virtuously if he has a complete and pleasant home life.

In accepting foreign rule, the Samoans have been patient and charitable with the shortcomings of their papalagi Gov ernors. But those who have shown them consideration for their age-old traditions have done infinitely more to promote co operation and goodwill than have those, intentionally or not, who disregard these precepts.

Samoans know full well that their civilisation is older than that of the administrators at Washington, and it would be well for those in position to make appointments to give this their serious attention. The latter should reckon with the fact that the Polynesians are an older branch of the Caucasian race than are the Washingtonians of the European branch. And, in their countless centuries of self-government under their matai system they have maintained a

higher standard of efficiency than has prevailed during the trying change to papa lag i rule, even with such benignity, during the past 50 years, as no people have known.

The Tasmanian-built schooner, Speed well, belonging to M. Graziani, a French settler in the New Hebrides, has been wrecked in the Banks Group. The Speed well was a vessel of the same tvne as the Hobart-built Evaleeta, which that fine seaman Captain H. Simms, also of Hobart, under wartime US Army contract, regu larly ran from Noumea to the Loyalty

Islands recruiting native labour for Noumea docks. Alas, the Evaleeta, which in 1946 the Americans handed over to the French, has been laid up ever since in Noumea’s Orphelinat Bay, and nothing has ever been done to put her again into commission. It is sad to think of South Pacific islands without these last beauti ful reminders of the great age of sail — for the Speedwell, I hear, is likely to be

replaced by a motor vessel.-

H.E.L.P.

The French gunboat, Francis Gamier, has been visiting the Marshall and Mari anna Islands.