View of

Missionary's View of Red Menace

If Americans don’t see New uinea as a country in which Communist terrorist lurks be nd every bush, it is not the ult of Mrs. Maria Trapp,

tio recently appeared in the

merican TV show “Who in the r orld”, over the Columbia

roadcasting System.

/fRS. TRAPP is a member of the famous Austrian musical family, me members of which in recent ars have been devoting part of eir time to missionary work in New uinea.

A New York correspondent has nt us a transcript of her statements i the show and the comment that me of them are “pretty wild, to y the least”. With this we couldn’t ;ree more. New Guinea has plenty : problems but to attribute all, or ly, of them to unidentified Com unists is to over-simplify the whole tuation. New Guinea needs educa m.

During the telecast Mrs. Trapp was iked what the New Guinea natives ;ed most and she replied: “They are badly in need of edu ition and to know what it is all

about. That is exactly what we are trying to do in our two missions.

“The Communists feed the natives lies. Their lies started many years ago. They tell the natives all their troubles are due to the white man.

“They are told you must get rid of him. The big bird called the airplane is sent by the ghosts of your an cestors. It bears gifts for the natives and the white people want to take them away from you.

“The natives really believe the air plane is a big bird. When a plane comes they come with huge piles of sweet potatoes and put them under the nose of the plane expecting the ‘bird’ to be hungry. The tribes come and kill the crew and then expect the plane to leave . . .

“An incident which shows the in fluence of the Communists upon the natives happened one day when we were visiting Volavalo, a mission station on New Britain, The mis sionary there, an Austrian, was very popular among the natives—they loved him very much.

“He was called outside the mission house. There were 18 tribe chiefs gathered together. They said they wished to speak to him. ‘Father,’ they said, ‘the day will come when we will have to kill all government people.

And the day will come when we will have to kill all white men. Father we ask you, from the bottom of our hearts, please, leave here before that day. Please, because if you don’t, we will have to kill you, too’.”

When Mrs. Trapp was asked when this was likely to happen she said that she did not know exactly but expected that within 10 years there would be no white man left in the area. Before then the natives them selves must be educated —they must be trained so that they could carry on as Christians themselves “after all white men and missionaries are killed and gone”.

Mrs. Trapp writes books and gives lectures as well as singing and she devotes royalties and funds to the two missionaries she supports—one in Fiji and one in New Guinea.

As far as New Guinea is concerned it’s obvious that she needs a little education herself. If she is going around the United States spouting that kind of stuff, the next thing on the White House agenda will be a cam paign to liberate P-NG from the Red menace. The way the US has “saved”

Indonesia and West New Guinea from Communism recently, by getting the Dutch out and letting Indonesia have what it wants, has already been an object lesson to both natives and Australians in East New Guinea and they want no part of any similar good offices.

s. Maria Trapp, photographed during her TV appearance.