W & H Men In New Guinea

Why There is a Call for Circumspect Behaviour

IN a letter addressed to the Editor of the PIM, a gentleman who signs him self S. Matfin, diesel engineer, and gives his address as Taskul, via Kavieng, New Guinea, protests almost violently against certain criticism of Works and Housing Department personnel, which was published in the PIM in November.

As a rule, we publish such letters, ir respective of the language employed; but Mr. Matfin’s strictures are a little over the odds, so we shall merely paraphrase his charges, and try to reply to them.

Mr. Matfin is of opinion that our de scription of some W & H personnel as uncouth specimens of the low-wage-plug type, who associate with native women, is not justified by facts. He says such a statement is likely to cause trouble bet ween married men in the Territories, and their wives at home, and between single men and their fiancees; and he adds “had I been a married man, I would most cer tainly have given you the thrashing you so richly deserve”!

Mr. Matfin says that they do not object to “good clean criticism” of any depart ment; that it is unfair to blame the W & H staff for something that has been created by “primitive and most difficult working conditions . . . lack of material, poor shipping and inadequate transport”: and he then invites the editor to go and view the work being done and interview the men he so easily condemns. He asks for constructive criticism, and an effort on the part of Territorians to make the men welcome in the Territories, so that ‘they may continue with Works and Housing to develop these, the most back ward islands in the world.”

THE articles to which Mr. Matfin ob jects were written by the Editor personally, after he had seen the W & H organisation at work in several parts of the Territories, and after he had listened for a month to Territorians’ comments on W & H activities. His criticism of the W & H set-up covered a wide field. The references to the poor type of SOME W & H personnel were only incidental thereto.

Before the war, the first rule of Euro pean residence in Papua-New Guinea was to guard the white man’s prestige. Euro peans regulated their behaviour in public —they knew how easily a wrong impres sion could be formed in the simple, primitive minds of these natives. Only a few low-class whites fraternised with natives.

During the war, hundreds of thousands of servicemen, knowing nothing of these rules, and caring less, went through the Territories. The harm they did can be better imagined than described.

It was hoped, after the war, to gradually re-establish the old relationship between white and black. That task was rendered difficult because a new political regime introduced a hotchpotch of sociological theorists, with some official authority, who subscribed to some vague plan of im mediately raising native standards of life, and placing natives on an equality with Europeans.

On top of that, W & H brought in a number of the poorer type of uneducated and irresponsible workmen. They are only a very small proportion of the W & H staff; but they are the kind of people who cannot understand that in a

black man’s country they must regulate their behaviour so as to command the respect of the natives. Instead, they have drunken orgies in public, and fraternise with natives—especially the “flash” natives found around Moresby and Rabaul. They are only a few, but they have done and are doing an incalculable amount of social harm just at a time

when we had hoped to get on with the task of restoring native morale.

WE agree, without reservation, that the great majority of W & H personnel are men of good type, who have had to carry out difficult jobs under conditions of appalling difficulty. They personally are not to blame for the facts that the public works of Papua-New Guinea are being carried out at almost fantastic cost- that there is evidence in many directions of inefficiency and muddling;

and that the system of paying semi skilled men far more than the skilled and experienced officers of the Administration departments has had a bad effect upon Territories services generally.

The Australian wives and sweethearts of W & H staff men in New Guinea can be assured that, in considerably more than 90 per cent, of cases, their men are conducting themselves with complete pro priety, under comfortless conditions. Our chief criticism was directed against the system, not against the men.