yesterday

In the Cook Islands veteran

official Stephen Savage, regis

trar of the Native Land Court,

had just died; in Suva there

was a shortage of electricity be

cause of the war; the APC oil drill was down on the Vailala

River, Papua, for 4,620 ft., and

American air strength in the

Pacific was reported to be grow

ing. This was the picture as

“PIM” saw it in September, 1941. : Here are some other extracts from that issue of 20 years ago: The news from New Guinea was not very satisfactory. Native morale was “deteriorating”, said a Rabaul correspondent, “because of the lack of a policy which will control the sophisticated natives in the towns and ensure better con ditions in the future”. Also the NG Administration had finally decided to transfer HQ from Rabaul to Lae and now found itself faced with the task of providing much more than the £250,000 it thought it needed to meet the cost of transfer. A Lae correspondent pointed out that if the Govern ment had moved the capital as it had been advised to do immediately after the 1937 Rabaul eruption, it would not now find itself in trouble. As it happened, the NG war was soon to intervene and prevent the transfer, anyhow. * * « The Bishop of Melanesia wrote to “PIM” agreeing with the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies who had recently stated in the House of Commons that the term “nigger” should never be applied to South Pacific people. The Bishop also urged the discontinuance of the equally offensive term “coon”, which he said was often carelessly applied in the South Pacific. In a footnote to his letter, “PIM” agreed and said the “somewhat tough lads of the Morobe goldfields are the chief offenders in using that objectlonal term”. * * * In Suva the Government had run short successively of bank notes, postage stamps and silver coins and now it had run short of pennies.

Inconvenience in retail shops was reported to be considerable, and the Treasury was continually issuing statements urging people to keep the pennies moving. * * * There was some political snarling in Fiji about the cost of the Fiji Government ship “Viti” and of the manner in which she was allegedly being used by the Governor, Sir Harry Luke. But a correspondent reported that wartime security forbade him from saying exactly what the “Viti” was doing, but if the critics knew, he said, they Would realise that recent expendi ture on the ship was completely Justified.