should P-NG Natives Go

To Coronation?

Argument About Effect On Natives

FT was announced in February L that a contingent of the Royal Papuan and New Guinea Con tabulary, officered by Europeans, rill attend the Coronation in June, b is presumed that they will travel d London with Australian service nits who are now training for the bronation procession.

There is a difference of public pinion in P-NG as to whether the Dntingent should be sent or not. ome residents probably the lajority—hold that it will do un )ld good, in that it will present to le natives the dignity, power and ageantry of the Empire and that ght of their queen will inculcate a >yalty which hitherto has been ased on something which, to them, as remote and intangible.

However, Mr. George Whittaker, NG State President of the Re irned Servicemen’s League says lat he is against a contingent of ative constabulary being sent. He lys that the money could be better >ent in providing hospitals; and lat unnecessary jaunts of natives /erseas does not improve their lorals. He cites the prevalence of ;x crimes in the Territory at the resent time.

There is some practical sense in hat Mr. Whittaker says with re ird to expenses; but man does 3t live by bread alone, and New uinea is in danger of getting out r step with the rest of the world i the question of what natives lould or should not do, just be iuse they are natives. It is pertin it to ask: Would there be the me desire to save money for hos tals if it were proposed to send contingent of European ex-service en?

Whether or not overseas junket g undermines native morals, or

is a contributory cause of crimes against European women, is open to doubt. How many of the native offenders have been overseas?

Native Peeping-Toms, native crimes against European women and children seem to be the peculiar problem of Papua-New Guinea.

They may have been known in other parts of the Pacific, in the past, but to-day they are virtually un known. Yet Papua-New Guinea is the only territory that clings to the prejudice against natives leaving their own home lot.

It is probable that whatever it is that turns the uncomplicated and unsophisticated savage of the P-NG native village/Into the Rabaul or Port Moresby perpetrator of a sex crime,

can be found right there in P-NG.

The thing to be wondered at is why it affects the P-NG native in this fashion and not, for example, the Fijian who also leaves his village to work in Suva or Lautoka.

It seems unlikely that the sending of a Coronation contingent to Lon don will raise the sex-crime in cidence in Papua-New Guinea.

Mr. B. E. V. Parham, OBE, who has been for 20 years in the Fiji Department of Agriculture, and is a distinguished botanist and en tomologist, has been appointed Deputy Director of Agriculture, in succession to Mr. W. J. Blackie, re cently transferred to Hongkong.