Commentary

By The

Editorial

Staff.

This Pidgin

Again

THE clamour about the use of Pidgin English in New 7 Guinea has broken out again in Sydney Morning Herald. Post-war planners, near-planners and other wide-eyed idealists of various kinds are insist ing that Pidgin is not fit to be used officially in any country controlled by the cultured West, and must be suppressed in favour of simple English. On paper, they may be right—and no one except a cynical administration official and a wearied missionary or two has troubled to point out how impractical are their arguments.

There are li million primitive people in P-NG. They speak scores —probably hundreds —of different languages. The Australian Admin istration has pledged itself to raise their standard of living very soon.

The Administration can do little in that direction unless it has a medium of communication with the mass of people. It has no such medium —no lingua franca of any kind —unless it: • Adopts, regularises and em ploys the despised Pidgin which everyone—and especially primitive natives and semi-literate Europeans —learns w’ith such ease and rapidity; or • Spends millions in (a) select ing and training natives to speak English and teach village schools and (b) equipping and staffing thousands of native village schools, where the children may be taught simple English.

The Administration appears to be already committed to the first alternative: but it will not say so, because the UNO Trusteeship Coun cil is nagging at Australia to offici ally discourage Pidgin in NG.

Meanwhile, Professor J. R. Hall, Cornell University’s Professor of Linguistics, is back again in New Guinea, closely studying Pidgin, and insisting that this can be used officially as an effective medium for reaching the people.

Administration

Headache No. 1

SEE elsewhere the report on Sir Robert Stanley”s recent in spection of Gilbert and Ellice Colony—and spare a little sympathy Jor this first independent British ■High Commissioner for the Western Pacific.

His domain comprises the huge, undeveloped, almost penniless Pro tectorate of Solomon Islands; the desperately overcrowded chain of atolls called the G and E Colony; and Britain’s side of the French dominated Condominium of the New 7

Hebrides —all pleasant places enough, but, economically, probably the most hopeless set-up in the British Em pire. There is no possibility of ensuring development without the introduction of private enterprise; and no possibility of inducing private enterprise to go into any of them, under present conditions. Sir Robert Stanley must often wonder why he was given such a tough proposition as his first major com mand in the British Colonial Office.

One quaint aspect is that there is marked under-population in the large Solomons area; and very real overcrowding in the extremely limited G & E Colony. Someone may ask: “Why not shift the fecund and industrious Gilbertese into the Solomons?” Well, why not?

This Volcanic

Liveliness

IT is noted that, in addition to the eruption of Mount Langlia, in New Britain (see article else where) there have been heavy eruptions of the volcano on Manam Island, off the New Guinea coast north of Madang. Manam fre quently erupts.

There nas been a startling out break at Mt. Ngaruahoe, an inter mittently active volcano in the centre of the North Island of NZ.

There has been a good deal of liveliness lately on the volcanic front —which runs down from Europe and Asia into the middle of Indonesia, and continues along the northeast coast of New Guinea and New Britain into Bougainville and Northern Solomons, and thence via New Hebrides and Tonga into New Zealand. Who knows—maybe the combination of A and H and C bombs will some day induce this old globe to split open along that vast line of fault.

Activities Of

The Missions

THE important part which the Christian Missions play in Pacific Islands affairs was apparent in May, when the following events commanded big headlines in Aus tralian and New’ Zealand news papers: Cardinal Gilroy, of Australia— whose status is higher than that of any other religious leader in the South Pacific —toured Papua and New Guinea.

Another Roman Catholic dignitary, the Papal Delegate from Australia, visited Fiji and Western Samoa, and a new 7 Bishop was consecrated in Apia.

An archbishop and other very high dignitaries of the Anglican Church visited Honiara, in the British Solo

mon Islands, there to take part in the consecration of a new Bishop of Melanesia.

The Australasian Methodist Con ference met in Brisbane in the latter end of May, and the highest ranking men of that Church at tended. Pacific Islands Mission affairs figured largely on the agenda, and among those present were the Rev. Tubu (a Fijian, now a student in Queensland) and Rev. Jotham Sau Faupula (Tonga).

The Conference resolved that the P-NG Administration be urged to raise the standard of native life; that instruction in technical train ing, agriculture and the use of native land should be provided; and that development could be achieved through training under native man agement, and the extension of the existing systems of native planta tions and producer-consumer co operatives.

The Conference commended the Federal Government’s New Guinea Administration but urged that it continue to exercise strictest caution and conservation with regard to natives’ timber, mineral and land rights.

The general secretary of the Methodist Mission, Rev. C. F.

Gribble, told the Conference that one of the main problems of Methodist missionary work in the Pacific was the difficulty of recon ciling Fijian and Indian culture.

About 150,000 Indians lived in Fiji, but only 5,000 said they were Christians in the 1946 census. “We have a great hope that these two members of the human family will learn to make a home together in Fiji,’’ Mr. Gribble said.

Why No

Malaria There?

Dr. MARSHALL LAIRD has gone from Suva to Singapore, where he has accepted an appoint ment at the University of Malaya.

For two years, assisted by his wife, Dr. Laird, on behalf of the New Zealand Air Force, carried on re search in the Western Pacific, “to gain information on why malaria carrying mosquitoes do not appear south of 20 deg. S and east of 170 deg. E. in the Oceanic Pacific.’’ The PIM first publicised, 20 years ago, this curious absence of malaria from Fiji and places eastward thereof.

An article on Dr. Laird’s work will be published in the July PIM.