Do You Remember ?

From RIM of 20 Years ago

rINGS looked good in the Pacific 20 years ago. Commodity prices were up, and planters, traders and the natives expected to benefit thereby, after years of belt-tighten ing. There were, for the moment, no international crises And the White Man still thought he should shoulder his Burden.

Here are some of the events that we reported in the issue of PIM,

November, 1936:

Copra prices were the highest for many years; London price was £18.5 per ton for Ist grade. In terms of real money, that probably was as good a price for the planter as to-day's London free market price of £Stg.6s. There was no one specific reason for the rise. Copra prices had risen slowly but steadily since the all-time low had been hit in April, 1934 —£7.5 per ton. * * * The Western Samoa government denied officially the report that NZ Administration officials were recalled to NZ if they married Samoan or part-Samoan girls.

Sir Arthur Richards, with Lady Richards and their three small children, arrived in Suva to become the Colony's new Governor and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific.

He * James Larkin, a planter in the Manus area of NG, was released from gaol in NSW after serving half of a 10 years' sentence for the "murder" of a native servant. Larkin's sen tence had been the subject of agitation for years —Territorians and the PIM holding that the offence was manslaughter, not murder, and the sentence excessive. (Larkin had ordered a native to be thrashed and the boy had later died of blood-poisoning). A petition bearing 600 sgnatures had been presented to the Ad

ministrator of NG asking for a reconsideration of Larkin's case. What happened to Mr. Lar kin when he got out of gaol is something of a mystery; RIM, at any rate, heard no more of him. Public opinion changes somewhat in 20 years. In those days Territorians held the quaint idea that it was fatal to European prestige for a European to be made an example of before natives. Democracy has marched on since then, and now it is held to be quite in order for a European woman to be put into gaol in the Territory for a civil offence. * * ♦ In respect of affairs legal, Mr. J. C. Mullaly, of New Guinea, and the then editor of RIM crossed verbal swords on the subject of Chief Justice Wanliss. Mr. Mullaly was pro-Judge Wanliss, while the RIM cast a few doubts on the justice of some of his recent verdicts.

Mr. Mullaly said that the editor "bounced in and out of New Guinea , . . with an air of pomposity". There was a whole lot more— but what the editor seemed to resent most of all was that pomposity! * * * Father Franz Kirschbaum, of the Catholic Mission, Alexishafen, NG, challenged Lord Moyne's "discovery" of pygmies in the Ramu River area. Fr. Kirschbaum said that he had discovered these people in 1926 and that sub sequently other members of the mission had visited the pygmies many times. * * * The Union Company ships "Makura" and "Maunganui" were on their last voyages across the Pacific, Sydney-North America via Tahiti and Rarotonga. "Maunganui" was to go onto the trans-Tasman service and "Makura" had been sold to China. Thus ended a direct Sydney-Tahiti service. But, RIM remarked, the Messageries Maritimes vessels offered an attractive alternative —Noumea to Tahiti via the South Pacific Islands, for £B7 return—with a connection every five or six weeks, Sydney- Noumea. The MM ships did not then end their voyage from Marseilles at Sydney.