The ‘Pacific Islands Monthly’ And Its

Readers

The Editor Discusses the Events of the Last 21 Years

WITH this issue, the PACIFIC ISLANDS MONTHLY completes 21 years of life It has been published every month since August, 1930. Internationally, as well as in relation to Pacific Islands affairs, these have been the most impor tant and significant years in human his tory.

First, there was the Depression. The Depression was the direct result of the disturbance of the world’s economic balance by World War I. In 1930, when the PIM was born, The Depression was at its worst. It was then that a thousand million people, hurt by forces they could not understand, began to look with sus picion upon the politico-economic sys tem of Western Europe, which controlled world economy.

Communism, at that time, was a joke.

But the Communists all over the world began to quote Karl Marx, who had ar gued that Western Civilisation was based on a fallacy (capitalism, or individualism) which inevitably must collapse. Here, said the Reds, is the first sign of collapse.

As the Depression worsened, Communism made progress.

A gent named Hitler saved the situa tion. He re-armed Germany, and threw the Western Powers into a panic. They began to re-arm; and the enormous de mands of re-armament took up all the unemoloyment slack throughout the world; and The Depression passed.

Seen in the light of history, that was a calamity. If there had been no Hitler, and no re-armament, the world would have been forced by Depression to read just its economic system to realities, and thus would have returned to the normality and comparative peace of the pre-1914 era. As it was, re-armament led in evitably to war; and war, as inevitably, carried our politico-economic systems into further confusion, and chaos.

It was against this background that the young PIM grew to maturity.

FROM September 3, 1939, until the collapse of the enemy at the end of 1945, the PIM each month published its War Diary—a compilation that, to day, is much in demand.

That War Diary contained some very tragic pages. For the first two years, the war was in Europe—remote, and difficult to imagine. Then came Pearl Harbour.

Within a few hours, in December, 1941. the Pacific Islands were more or less in the front line. Within three months, Japs were swarming into the Gilberts, Ocean Island, Nauru, East Indies, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomons. They were not actually in Paoua, the New Hebrides, or the Ellice Islands: but those groups, and New Cale donia, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Oceania were very close to the battlegrounds, and full of the armed per sonnel of America, Australia and New Zealand FOR years, prior to 1939, the PIM had been urgently trying to tell the world of the Japanese menace —of how Jap agents and spies were penetrating every island community and charting every reef.

No one took any notice.

After 1941, the PIM might have crowed “I told you so!” But we were much too busy, in 1942, to have time for any such futile gesture. We were trying to find a large section of subscribers who, literally within days, had simply disappeared. All the thousands of Europeans in New Guinea, Papua and the Solomons had been

evacuated; or, with a rifle and a ground sheet. had gone away into the jungle, on more or less secret service. Most of the journal’s readers in the other Pacific Islands were either moving rapidly, or cut off from mails and transportation.

While war raged in the Pacific Islands, all ordinary trading was finished. No one wanted to advertise goods for sale to the Pacific Islanders.

With few advertisers, and so many readers widely scattered, and out of con tact, the outlook for the PIM was de finitely blue. ‘’Better close her up until the war’s over,” said my friends. “No need for a PIM now.”

Force and disappeared over far horizons.

They took away half our printinghouse crew; and I had to camp there and do factory chores. I was really busy.

Yet, somehow, i couldn’t bear to close the PIM—I felt that it had a war-time j° b to do ; 80 lt; P roved - The widely-scattered people of the Islands, homeless and distracted, wanted a rallying-point where they could get news of their Islands, and tidmgs of their hus bands, brothers and friends, now fighting in the jungle. They really needed a place where they could discuss their uncertain future.

Little by little, in that black year of 1942, we gathered our readers together again. In spite of incredible difficulties, and the silliest and stupidest censorship I have ever heard of, we collected and published news of the war in the Islands, and of the activities and fate of Islands

people. We assisted in the formation of the Pacific Territories Association: and, in season and out, we fought bureaucracy with everything we had for a fair deal for the Islands refugees.

For a little while, I was single-handed.

A score of old friends among our adver tisers refused to remove their advertise ments from the PlM—even although it had no use as a publicity medium —and with their support we kept going. Then, in a Melbourne war factory, chauffeuring a shell-making machine, I found a New Guinea lass who really could write, and who hated shell-making; and so Judy Tudor joined the attenuated staff of the

Pim.

INEVITABLY, as the years passed, and the enemy was driven northwards out of the South Seas, and the restoration of civil government began, we got into conflict with the apostle of Australian Socialism, a politician named Eddie Ward.

The Australian Labour Government made Eddie the Minister in charge of Pauua and New Guinea —probably because he had never seen a native or smelled copra—and,

of course, Eddie began to apply the prin ciples of his political creed to Islands trading and industries.

It was a hectic period and, for Islands folk, an unforgettable experience. They had been chased out by Japs; beggared by war; compensated to some extent by the War Damage Fund (created to cushion the effects of the anticipated in vasion of Australia); and now, because they were engaged in private enterprises, they were treated by one of the King’s Ministers as social sinners and pariahs.

The Empire has heard much of the Edwardian period of British history. But not enough has been told —yet—of the Eddiewardian era in New Guinea.

Eddie Ward is politically dead and buried; but some of his appointees are still marching on, and his Territories effort will remain as one of the quaintest chapters of Pacific history, as recorded month by month in the PIM.

IN 1942, like most of the Pacific Islands people, we of the PIM were confused and aimless: but, long before the end of the Pacific War, we had found a job to

do—namely, we were using the PIM and all the publicity media available to us to assist the Territories people to return home and rehabilitate themselves.

Immediately the War was over, far reaching political, administrative and commercial changes took place. There were alterations in the status and the governmental machinery of nearly all the Islands countries. Shipping lines were restored only in part—air lines spread over all the archipelagoes. Radio brought every Islands resident into direct touch with the world. Trading conditions changed profoundly. The Islands folk were asked to adjust their daily lives to a new and different tempo.

In all these things, the PIM played its part, by providing a regular service of in formation and by offering comment which, whether right or wrong, did at least seek the greatest good of all the Islands resi dents, and did keep their wishes before the political panjandrums.

The Islanders returned to their homes; and, for a time, it looked as if we all were to enjoy a wonderful era—the era of phenomenal prices for coconuts and cocoa. But, almost before we began to spend the new money, new troubles beset us.

TO explain what has happened, we must go back a few decades.

The economic sickness (The Depres sion of 1929-32 was the chief result of it) which followed World War I, was directly the result of the failure of the nations to handle the economic problems created by four years of total war.

One cannot take most of the skilled workers of the world out of their normal productive occupations for a long time, and compel them to either engage in the non-productive work of active service, or the equally useless work of producing war

materials.' and pay for most of it by simply printing and issuing bank-notes, without throwing the world’s whole econo mic system out of adjustment.

If life and living standards were going to be resumed, after 1918, where they stopped in 1914, great wisdom, great sac rifices and great statesmanship were called for. The world got none of those things; and so it just naturally went straight into The Depression, into political confusion, and into World War 11. One might have thought humanity would have learned the lesson, and be haved with sanity after World War 11. Be cause an even larger proportion of the world’s workers were out of non-produc tive work, for a much longer time, and the total destruction was enormously greater, than in World War I; and a far greater amount of unbased paper currency was printed and circulated.

Only great strength and firmness of government—a ruthless insistence, for ex ample, that the only thing to counter the evils inherent in the continued circulation of that flood of useless paper money was a period of very high production at the lowest possible cost—could avert the dis asters that otherwise must attend the far reaching dislocation of the world’s econo mic machinery.

But humanity had learned nothing at all.

Almost before the fighting had ceased, the nations had gone off on the maddest politico-economic spree the world has ever seen. Some, like Poland and Czechoslo vakia, went completely Communist; some, like Britain and France, went Socialist— that is, half way.

Just at a time when, to counter their almost incalculable war losses, the British should have been encouraging the utmost individual production at the lowest rate, and the conservation of all their overseas resources, they started to “nationalise” their principal industries, and to give away large sections of their Empire.

Inevitably, the whole Western world has slipped into almost indescribable ec onomic confusion, which daily grows worse. Hosts of babbling little men—most of them the useless puppets of political pressure groups—run around in circles and get in each other’s way. They achieve nothing. Economic maladjustment now is so great all over the world that infla tion is practically out of control, and we all are faced with an actual food short age. . .

SO the PIM attains its majority under conditions almost exactly similar to those which existed when it was born —namely, an acute political crisis has been caused by mankind’s pitiful inability to handle the economic condi tions created by a world war. The world, 20 years ago, was saved from economic collapse by the threat of World War 11.

Is history going to repeat itself, and is to-day’s world going to escape economic disaster by the threat of World War III?

It looks like it.

WHEN the PIM uttered its first new born squall, 21 years ago, British prestige still was high throughout the East, and the Union Jack was the only flag we folk, south of Capricorn, could see in the Pacific. North, east and west, we recognised the friendly ensigns of United States, France and Holland, respectively; but in all moments of international stress we looked naturally to Whitehall for pro tection and support.

Within that brief span of two decades we have seen some extraordinary events.

British prestige in the East has been de stroyed, the British flag counts for little in the Pacific, and the strong and friendly Dutch people have disappeared from our western boundaries —all because the Little

Sisters of the Reds got possession of Whitehall in 1945. and proceeded to un dermine the Empire which they so hated.

To-day, we of the South Seas look for protection and security to the United States—the mighty Power which over threw Japan in four bloody years, and which now leads the free world against the Muscovite and—what is of supreme importance to us—against Red Asia. Al though comparatively small in popu lation, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, once the strongest section of the British' Empire, now are accepted as America’s closest partners in the task of defending the free peoples of the Pacific.

Of all the changes that have taken place in our 21 years, that seems to us to be the most significant.

IHOPE our readers —and, especially, my many personal friends among those readers—will forgive me for (as my candid assistant editor expresses it) chas ing my tail around among the politico economic problems. But the plain fact is that the history of the PIM is all mixed up with these things.

Ever since I founded the journal, the record has been one of crises—economic, political, administrative and military. In all the 21 there _have not been

26 consecutive months of quietness and peace. I, and people of my generation, almost pray that there presently will come a time when we may cease to fret over prices and political creeds and threats of war, and devote serious thought to con serving human happiness and assisting human well-being—a period something like the second half of last century.

At the moment, there is little of the kind in sight. Nonetheless I make bold to express the wish that presently we all may enjoy some freedom from these alarums of war and politics.

And, looking back over 21 years of good and bad times, in which we at least have tried to give service to Islands people, we (the Editor, and Selwyn Hughes, Manager, and Judy Tudor, Assistant Editor) can say, with complete sincerity, Thank you all very much for 21 years of consistent support, frequent kindness and tolerant understanding. We hope the record of the next 21 years will have in it less gunpowder and more butter (even if it’s mostly margarine!).

R. W. Robson.

Recent arrivals in Fiji include Mr. P.

N. Dalton (Solicitor-General, who has been appointed to act as Attorney-General until the return from England of Mr. B. A.

Doyle): Mr. and Mrs. R. Crompton, re turned from New Zealand; Mr. and Mrs K. H. Marks, from Melbourne; and Mr. and Mrs. R. N. Caldwell, from leave spent in Australia; Dr. Paley, returned after receiving medical attention in Melbourne; Mr. and Mrs. H. E. Canard, from over seas leave; and Dr. and Mrs. P. G. Grif fiths, from leave spent in England.

Mr. Alexander Hamilton Irvine, an esteemed old resident of the Nadroga district of Fiji, died on June 23, aged 69.

He was the eldest son of a former Attorney-General of Fiji.