Do You Remember ?

From PIM of 20 Years Ago.

A UGUST, 1936, was a particularly J\ dull month in the Pacific —except in Western Samoa to which the exiled Mau leader had recently returned, and where a delegation of the newly-elected Labour Party of NZ was visiting. This change of NZ Government did, in fact, put an end to the Mau troubles; but NZ’s Socialists had other ideas that were not so popular. They were for example, determined to get rid of the Chinese who had been intro duced by the Germans to work in the plantations. And this, as history has shown, they subsequently did.

Here are other extracts from the PIM of August, 1936: About 15,000 Samoans gathered on Apia's foreshore when the Mao leader, Mr. 0. F.

Nelson, returned by "Maui Pomare" to Western Samoa with his three daughters after two years exile in New Zealand. Mr. Nelson had been preceded to the Territory by a NZ "good will mission" of Labour parliamentarians who returned to NZ to announce that all the "mis trust, grievances and misunderstanding of the past have been cleared away". * * * Childishness in public life, was what we called it when three former councillors of the recently defunct Suva Town Council were charged with the cost of one mayoral chain.

Suva had changed over from an elected Council to a nominated Town Board, and Mr. Alport Barker had been the last mayor. As a parting gift, three of the ex-Councillors presented him with the Mayoral chain of office; no one was going to need it on the Town Board, anyhow.

Unauthorised expenditure, the new auditors called it; the three councillors were taken to Court and charged £l3/10/- for their senti mental gesture. * * * A paper pulp mill to cost £500,000 was to be established at Collingwood Bay, Papua. The pulp was to be made from kunai grass and the paper from the pulp was to be of fine writing and printing quality. British Australian Pulp

and Paper Co. were the promoters. The was to turn out from 15,000 to 20,00 ff of pulp per year. If was just one of dreams that did not happen. * * * "Most ominous" was the way "o quarters" were regarding the fact that native villages around Rabaul were settiii their own copra driers and selling dire copra-buyers instead of selling copra in parcels to traders. The small traders being "deprived" and natives were bea "possessed of too much money".

These sentiments make odd reading in * * * A stir was caused by Australian news! when the Captain of a ship reported sii a man on remote Motu Iti in the S Group. Mrs. C. T. P. Ulm, wife of the fl airman who had disappeared on a trans-l flight near Honolulu in 1934, said she bo that it was her husband and Australian papers took up the cry. Investigations a that Motu Iti was currently inhabited by l cutters. «{• One thing that has not changed much years is the Cook Islands fruit trade witH Zealand. In our issue of August, 193 E tomato growers were complaining bitterlyi having "cheap labour" tomatoes dumpt them. As it was then mid-winter in would be interesting to know where the tomatoes were coming from. * * * A traveller in Western Samoa was lyn the low cost of living in that Territory, rent was £2 to £3 per month. House su £1 per month; native foodstuffs in ko It was said that for £4OO per year a could live in luxury.

Sjs * Mr. Jack Hides, who had resigned frc Papuan Administration, was prevented!] leading a gold mining expedition into w now the Southern Highlands of Papua,, he had discovered, when the area was su; proclaimed an "uncontrolled area". Mr ■ was to have been accompanied by Capt.l Taylor—now Sir Gordon Taylor—famous *