From the Islands Press

DURING my six-mile drive to Avarua (Rarotonga) each morning, I see time and again children of school age playing the wag. 1 see the same ones so often that their absence can hardly be attributed to an odd day’s picking tomatoes, or weed ing the taro patch.

One little girl in particular, a charming lass of 11 years, spends several days each week walking the Avarua streets when she should be attending Ngatangiia school. She is obviously clever beyond the average, her English diction is faultless, yet she is wasting most of her school days, really through no fault of her own, as she is not under parental control, and the school does not seem to care twopence.

With the ever-increasing vote for education aimed at fitting the Cook Islanders for modern life, surely somebody should see that full advantage is being taken of this most important phase of their lives. If attendance at school is to be purely optional we will be the laughing stock of the Pacific.— Letter from C. Russell in the “Cook Islands News”.

WOULD the Alofi basketball girls please come to the green at 4.30 p.m. today? Please bring your bushknives with you. —Bloodthirsty notice in “Niue Daily News”.

THE weighty utterances of the last Parliament have still not been forced between the covers of Western Samoa’s cyclostyled “Hansard”. The English version for the period July, 1963, to January, 1964, fills 994 pages.

And the Samoan will fill about 1,200. It’s a lot of paper con sidering how rarely it’s consulted. —From “Random Remarks?’ in the “Samoa Bulletin”, Apia.

GEORGES Pompidou, Louis Jacquinot, Alain Peyrefitte. . . . Hardly has a Cabinet minister [from France] finished his visit to us than another is announced on the horizon. After the Minister of Information [Mr. Peyrefitte], Tahiti is to have the honour and pleasure of greeting Mr.

Maurice Herzog, Minister of Youth and Sports.

This honour, this pleasure will be unmixed, we believe, if the welcoming formalities could be rejuvenated. . . . The formalities date from a period when the arrival of a member of the Gov ernment in Polynesia had the same effect as the arrival of a comet.

You rubbed your eyes and didn’t believe it.— Columnist Maurice Ciantar in “Le Journal de Tahiti”.

AS UN economist A. Gerakas has stated a number of times, Western Samoa has only three eggs in its economic basket—if one is cracked we can get by, but if two are cracked we are in a bad way.

This is exactly the position in which the country now finds itself. Of the three export crops of cocoa, bananas and copra, the returns from cocoa and bananas are well below expectations.

While export earnings are falling, consumer demand within the country is rising. In other words, the country is spending more than it is earning.

This situation cannot be pro longed in a country such as Samoa with limited reserves and unless rectified must result in a falling standard of living.— Editorial in “Sarnoana”, Apia.

SUFFICIENT protection is not provided by any existing regulations for the most beautiful of our [Lord Howe Island] fish.

I refer particularly to the coral or butterfly fish (chactodons), three sub-species of which (one is known locally as “honeymoon fish”) are found nowhere else in the world; and to parrot fish, anemone fish, demoiselles, and many others.

None of these could be classed as edible fish, yet I have often seen spear gunners kill them at Ned’s Beach, after I had fed them for months and made them quite tame. Could not the Ned’s Beach area be at least closed to spear fishermen, as is the case with the Lagoon?— Letter from E. Rhoades in the Lord Howe Island “Signal”.

A LETTER received by the [Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony] Philatelic Bureau suggests that our first day air mail covers may be responsible for the visit of our first airways tourist.

Mrs. Gertrude Baker, of Cali fornia, USA, after receiving her first day cover and philatelic bulletin, felt she just had to visit Tarawa. She said: “I have post marks from Funafuti, and, of course, Tarawa, but I never thought I would be able to go there. Now is my chance and I must take it. 1 will be in Tarawa on October 13”.— News item in the GEIC “Colony Information Notes”.

THIS weekend [October 10-11] hundreds of holiday-makers will swell the usual number of bus and car passengers travelling daily on the main roads of Viti Levu. They will be bumped about and enveloped in clouds of dust.

They will arrive at their destina tions hot and tired and dirty, and they will say, as thousands before them have said, week after week, year after year, “Why can’t some thing be done about those roads?”

Well, why can’t something be done?

If the Public Works Depart ment, with its army of employees and masses of costly equipment and transport, cannot give a satis factory answer, let the help of commercial contractors be sought, even if the cost of decent roads must be met by tolls.— Editorial in “The Fiji Times”, Suva.

NOW that we have seen our constabulary turned into little boy blues, we can ruminate again on that seemingly less and less important question—preserving a national identity in Papua-New Guinea. . . .

The monstrous combination of Air Force blue, Army beret, Boy Scout socks and farmers’ boots is equalled in appearance only by the obvious discomfort with which they are worn.

This, of course, puts the cap on the likelihood of Papuans and New Guineans ever adopting a distinctive dress for themselves.

We are stamping these people into our own likeness; and the main towns will soon become copies of Cairns, Bondi in summer or any other town which models itself on Beethoven or American pop songs.— Editorial in the “South Pacific Post”, Port Moresby.