The Editors' Mailbag

Cut the Tobacco Issue,

He Says!

AN old New Guinea friend, Pastor Louis T. Grieve, of the Wabag Mission of Seventh-day Adventists, finds much in recent scientific pronouncements on the harmfulness of tobacco to support his own views.

He recounts at length various medical opinions to the effect that smoking and lung cancer and heart disease are related, and then pro duces the startling proposition that NG authorities are guilty of grave misdemeanour by requiring that to bacco issues be made to native labourers.

Mr. Grieve concludes his letter: “The April issue of Papua and New Guinea Villager features an article concerning the Queen Eliza beth Coronation Gift Fund for mothers and children. Illustrating this article is the picture of a mother and child with the caption, ‘Healthy People—What We Do Want.’

“If the health of the indigenous peoples is on our conscience, it is incumbent on us to cease sponsoring and promoting the tobacco habit by legal means and do all in our power to secure a discontinuance of the iniquitous regulation requiring em ployers to supply native employees with tobacco, and thus, at the same time, enforcing an enormous waste of private and public funds, irre spective of whether we, ourselves, smoke.”

Rabaul Revisited

From a correspondent who visited Rabaul recently: One of Rabaul’s less publicised in dustries is an attempt by the Reimber group of natives to go into

poultry-farming business.

A minor official (who naturally wants to remain anonymous) speak ing off the record said that it was a “bit before its time.” One gathers that the experiment has not been an unqualified success.

The natives imported day-old chicks from Australia, and initially the meal with which to feed them.

However, when the meal runs out the chickens are fed on village scraps and coconuts, and this does not induce high egg production.

But we are informed that Rabaul is not without a reasonably adequate local egg supply, from European sources. One European poultry farm out near Kerevat is doing very well with a Rhode Island flock. * * * ..

An officer of the Department of Agriculture attends the departure of planes from Rabaul. His job is to see thait unauthorised plants,

etc., do not leave the District which has some wogs as yet un known elsewhere in P-NG.

He did not ask to examine our baggage and said that his main job was to keep an eye on travelling natives.

I personally doubt whether natives are worse offenders than Euro peans when it comes to carrying bits and pieces of plants and seeds about. But I haven’t the temerity to suggest that all baggage of travelling Europeans should be opened and searched —local Euro peans would be fittingly infuriated if that were done. But I do think that the officer could interrogate each traveller and get his assurance that he was not carrying prohibited plants, etc.; and that a large notice to the effect that such practice is tabu could be displayed some where in the bus-stop-like shed that does duty as Rabaul’s air terminal.

I looked for such a notice— although not very carefully—but could see none.

Fate of Capt. Keller

A reader who would not give her name, but described herself as “just an old-timer” (and she did not sound so old, at that), rang us end of July and said that she had met

Captain Otto Keller’s wife in Brii bane in 1946 and had been told 1 her that the Captain had died dui ing internment in Singapore dm ing the Pacific war.

Captain Keller was well-knov in the Solomons area 30 or years ago and it was generally b< lieved that he had been dead man years. Our original inquiry for hii came from Germany.

Pamplemousse Again!

Various readers have been ii trigued by the name given the larg sweet citrus fruit, pamplemousse-: described on page 74 of May Pl' as “grown only in Tahiti.”

But the High Commissioner fi the Government of India in Fiji, M N. V. Rajkumar, challenges tH latter description. Here is the vei interesting letter he has sent i from Suva; “With reference to the item et titled ‘Pamplemousse from tl\ Jungles of Tahiti, in your May issu your readers might be interested ; hear that the type of large citrt fruit mentioned therein is availatu in large quantities in certain aret of South India.

“And, what is more interestim is the fact that in at least on Indian language — viz., Konkani — tl\ fruit is known as ‘Pamplemousst Isn't it, after all, ‘One World’!”