The Editors' Mailday

Bsip Air Services

Sir, —Members of the Civil Servants Association of the BSIP are becoming anxious about the improv ing public image of the air services supplying the Protectorate. After reading your April edition one gains the impression that things are getting better. On the contrary, a number of disturbing features have appeared recently which give the impression that the air services are not really very concerned about their public image here, so long as satisfactory publicity is produced in a Pacific Press.

Our air service to Australia has recently deteriorated by the with drawal of the weekly Fokker Friend ship and its replacement every fort night by the old DC3 service, which takes an extra day on the journey via Lae and Port Moresby to Aus tralia.

The internal air service for reasons which were not made public, but which seemed to the layman rather like an “unofficial strike”, ceased giving service altogether for a short period in order to make some par ticular point clear.

The air service to Fiji has recently earned a certain amount of publicity, at least in this particular area, be cause a number of passengers from Honiara to Vila and Fiji each had to leave a piece of baggage behind to be forwarded later. In reply to protests about this inconvenience to passengers the airline representatives informed the complainants that safety factors were paramount. This, of course, is universally agreed.

It is however alarming to observe that there appears to be no co ordination of passenger information and statistics between airlines which would enable a group or unit of people en route from Port Moresby to Nadi to be weighed and “pro cessed” so that they do not have half their baggage taken from them at Honiara. This will not encourage tourism of the kind described on p. 131 of your April edition.

We have the impression that the travel agents here are run ragged by sheer pressure of work. They are understood to have experienced staff but they apparently need more of them and probably need ad ditional office equipment to enable them to operate efficiently.

The business brought to the air lines operating to, from and within

this Protectorate is steadily in creasing, and my association firmly believes that it is justified in seeking publicity for our difficulties.

The association is pursuing in dependently, with certain of the parties involved, items of particular complaint. In informal discussions which have so far taken place we have been referred to the “small print” dealing with carriers’ legal obligations, and I must emphasise that no complaints are being made about standards of safety. All these airlines have demonstrated a wonder ful safety record, which we hope will be maintained.

However there is an increasing need for similar standards of absolute efficiency and absolute accuracy to be established for the booking and handling of the people who are carried in these machines.

E. O. Armstrong

Hon. Sec.

BSIP Civil Servants Association Honiara, British Solomons

Whippy Harbour

Sir, —I was appalled to see in my article headed “Stories Behind Fiji's Place Names” (PIM, June, p. 83) that Wilkes had named Suva “Whippy Harbour”, because he also gave the same name to Serua Harbour, and that was what I said in the manu script I sent you.

I would be grateful if you could make an alteration in the next PIM, otherwise the Whippy family will be claiming Suva Harbour! I wouldn’t mind as long as it is not on my say so!

S. B. Brown.

Suva, Fiji.

Editors Note : Our apologies to Captain Brown. His manuscript did say that Serua (not Suva) Harbour had been named “Whippy Harbour” by Commodore Wilkes. Our rheumy eyed sub-editor, who was responsible for the error, has been ordered to have his eyes tested.

Naming Of Henderson '"Field"

Sir, —I read the letter from the BSTP’s Chief Information Officer with interest {PIM, May, p. 55). I fully understand his point of view.

Let him call the present installation near Honiara, Guadalcanal Airport by all means, but I think he is wrong in denigrating the word “field”.

This has always been used, and is still used, to denote a strategic landing ground.

We still have Archer Field in Queensland, and “field” is historic to flying men I believe Essendon is officially referred to as Melbourne Airport, and now they are to try to call Tullamarine “Melbourne Airport”, so everyone will continue to refer to the geographical locations, and call them Essendon and Tullamarine. Familiar usage always wins.

Henderson Field will always be Henderson Field to at least 100,000 ex-servicemen, and their families, and as most of the tourists of the future, especially Japanese, will be from among these, I think Henderson Field will have to survive. In any case h has an interesting history, almost 25 years old.

During my last visit to Guadalcanal, in 1962, I discussed with the then High Commissioner the possibility of naming some of these places with a war history before they got lost altogether. Lack of money, naturally, was the chief difficulty.

A number of exservicemen are interested in this.

Let, therefore, the Chief Information Officer put up a solid

lasting plaque, say, on Pagoda Hill, to the effect that “this was the site of Henderson Field”, what it was all about, who Henderson was, etc.

Then at least tourists will have some thing of interest to look at when they find that “Guadalcanal Airport” is just like any other anywhere in the world.

If he wants to appeal for funds to do this, I am sure there would be willing helpers. I trust he knows where Pagoda Hill is. As I happen to be the first Britisher to take off from the “Field” (on a supply drop to a coastwatcher) in August, 1942, I hope he will take my sugggestion seriously.

Martin Clemens

Toorak, Melbourne, Victoria ccrPCTC nc rue cidc\a/ai i/cdc

Secrets Of The Firewalkers

Sir,—As a student of anthropology and comparative religion, I was very interested in Robert Langdon’s article on firewalking in the South Pacific. ( PIM , May, p. 64).

I have just returned from a study trip to Fiji, where I had several in teresting conversations on the subject with Fijians, all of whom agreed that the explanation lay in the realm of the metaphysical.

I instanced your six explanations

for the feat to a Dr. Peni, a qualified Fijian medical practitioner, of Namo tomoto Village, Nadi, and asked him which he thought came nearest to an explanation for the feat—toughened, heat-resistant feet; protecting oint ment; coating of sweat on the feet; auto-suggestion; hypnotic trance; or a special property in the stones.

He said that the explanation lay in none of these, but in a combination of the exercise of mental and spiritual abilities of the person. A degree of spiritual purity was required, plus mental control to enable certain higher psychic forces to work through a person.

Auto-suggestion was insufficient, the person requiring an insight into the workings of metaphysical forces or vibrations; the performers of the feat merely demonstrated that that which we believe to be the soles of the feet, or the stones— are in fact merely a collection, or density of vibrating waves and atoms; and that it was a matter of calling into being, by a metaphysical process known to the natives of Beqa (and to others—the Kahunas of Hawaii, for example), certain other vibrations which put, as it were, a protective “wall” about the feet, or between the feet and the stones.

This practice of forming a force

field of certain currents is also known to certain Indian yogis and students of the metaphysical sciences.

This accords with practice in Liberia, known as Trial by Sasswood (written of by Esther Warner in a book of that name) whereby a per son accused of a crime can elect to be tried by Sasswood if he feels suf ficiently certain of his own innocence.

He is required to plunge his arm into a cauldron of boiling oil and retrieve an object, without injury to the arm.

In the case that Esther Warner saw the accused was able to do this with no previous preparation of any kind. It is believed that a person with sufficient purity (of thought and being), or virtue, and free of guilt, would not be harmed; and has abso lute faith in the fact that he will be unharmed. This faith no doubt is one of the secrets; he who doubts is lost; and only he who knew himself to be guilty would doubt, and there fore would not risk the trial.

I would be interested to read in your journal of any other readers’ contributions to this interesting phenomenon, which raises the whole matter of conscious control of metaphysical forces, which are ad mittedly not very measurable, but none the less real and operative, for all that.

Epsom,

Josette Bryan.

Auckland, NZ.

Dalrymple-Hay Again

Sir, —Mr. Ken Dalrymple-Hay cannot repudiate his apparent racial discrimination in the Hotel Mendana {PIM, Mar., p. 125). He says he does not discriminate but later on in the same article he says “any Solomon Islander seen drinking in the main lounge, no matter with whom, would be asked to leave”.

Isn’t that racial discrimination? Of course it is! This is not social dis crimination. It is racial discrimina tion. I am sure the 136,000 inhabi tants of the Solomons would rightly be on my side.

I will admit that racial disharmony is inevitable in any country where two different communities exist. Just as we cannot fully turn an English man into a Solomon Islander—in the real sense of the word—and vice versa, so it is equally impossible to fully integrate the two vastly dif ferent communities of cultural dis similarities, creed, colour, race and social background into one har monious community. Yes, I under stand this.

I do feel that the Solomons faces an interesting time in the years ahead.

But there is no need for any particu larly bad times if we encourage the right attitude now and strongly dis

courage any contrary attitude to humanitarianism. Characteristic of the latter is Mr. Dalrymple-Hay’s segregation policy.

Yet I am encouraged on the ground that Mr. Dalrymple-Hay is in the minority. He will have to change his ideas and measure up to the demands of the majority or else learn that there is such a word “commandeer” in the English language.

Peter Kenilorea.

Ardmore Teachers’ College, Auckland, New Zealand.

The Administrative Crisis

Sir, —I must commend Stuart Inder for his article on the New Guinea administrative crisis {PIM, March, p. 11). I can assure you that the confusion doesn’t stop at the administrative level of the Public Service but continues right down the line. I think, and have thought for years, that the Administrator should have far greater powers.

There are serious problems on other fronts. It will, for instance, be interesting to see what comes out of the rural wages inquiry recently completed. If plantation wages rise by the expected 20 per cent, some older plantations just won’t be

economic propositions. Money is not easy to come by for new develop ment, such as cattle production (which could be worthwhile in this area). Cattle require a lot of capital, and contrary to the impres sion some banking authorities have given recently, loans for more than four years are very hard to get.

Planter.

Lae,

New Guinea.

Two Dr. Gunthers

Sir, —The item in the Yesterday column {PIM, April, p. 93) about Dr. J. T. Gunther, who was described as being “well-known on the Morobe goldfields before the war” confuses two Dr. Gunthers. Dr. John Gunther, now vice-chancellor of the P-NG University, was not the man on the goldfields—he was Dr. Carl Gunther.

It was however Dr. John Gunther who gave the warning about scrub typhus, which was the point of PlM’s par.

Claude Champion.

Dee Why, NSW.

Editors note : Mr. Champion is quite right. PIM in that paragraph perpetuated an error which began 20 years previously, in the issue of April, 1946.