Do You Remember?

From PIM of 20 Years ago

TEMPUS FUGIT ... but the world seems to be mulling over the same old problems even 20 years on. Different people; same heartburnings. How much simpler life would have been if all races had been endowed with the Pacific Islanders’ philosophy. Now, of course, we have infected them with the virus of wanting to do as well, and if possible better, than one’s neighbours.

Some of the following items from our issue of October, 1937, show what bothered people in the Pacific at that time: "Get busy—or get out" was the title of the editorial that month. It went on to say; "If Australia is not involved in inter national trouble over New Guinea before long she deserves to be . . . Australia sits on top of one of the world's richest and most desirable new territories and does little more than twiddle her thumbs . . . The holding of occupiable country nowadays can be justified only if that country is being occupied and developed for human needs".

What that editorial said then might have been original, but it isn't any more. * * * The Rabaul eruption—which had cost an esti mated £40,000 —had "knocked holes in NG's surplus". £40,000 doesn't sound much for

a national disaster to-day when nothing costs less than a million.

He H: 9 In contrast to the nasty things we said about New Guinea we had much praise for Fiji which we said was the Pacific's richest territory. The Colony had budgeted for a deficit of £15,000 that year, but came up with a surplus of about £120,000 —plus a new Rewa Bridge, new Government Offices under construction and a new Suva-Sigatoka road nearing completion. And, we said, new wharves were planned for Lautoka and Suva.

Well, they are still planned.

"Bigger Crops and Better Shipping" was what a headline said was needed by the Cook Islands fruit industry. As true then as it is to-day.

Captain Eric de Bischop and his companion had completed another leg of their voyage from Honolulu to France in a catamaran when they made a 61 days crossing of the Indian Ocean from Indonesia to Capetown. Captain de Bischop had been in the Pacific making scientific investigations into the origin of the Polynesians for a couple of years. He believed that they came from America and not Asia.

He must have changed his mind in the last 20 years. One of the things he wanted to prove in the drift voyage in the raft "Tahiti Nui" (December, 1956, to May, 1957, when the raft was wrecked within a few hundred miles of its goal) was that Polynesians could have drifted to Sooth America and drifted back again.