Up Front
pp. 16-17 · Read in the full issue
with the editor
This business of independence for New Guinea is begin ning to get on my G-string. Fair’s fair, but you can overdo it.
Nobody has yet asked for independence, and I don’t see why it should continue to be thrust down everybody’s throats.
THE trouble with New Guinea this last year or two (and in the last few months since the general election came into the offing) is that the mod erate voices aren’t being heard. We hear only the extremists.
This is nonsense, because politic ally I suspect the New Guinean to be a pretty conservative sort of fellow.
If he understood the picture that was being painted of him on the world scene he wouldn’t thank any body for it.
We are getting more than our fair share of extremist Europeans in New Guinea, too; which makes it tough for those uncommitted citizens who are merely trying to understand what is going on.
The two extremes
You know the European types. On the one hand there are those who despise all New Guineans as calculat ing kanakas plotting to organise a bloodbath just as soon as European restraints are off. They’ll tell you in a loud voice that the only thing the New Guinean understands is a clip under the earhole occasionally and firm action at all other times.
The opposite group loves Brown Brother to death. They are constantly apologising to the New Guinean for being there; they take offence on be half of New Guineans for imagined slights by other white men; and assume out loud that we can hardly expect New Guineans not to hate us, considering the terrible things we’ve done to them in the past.
Well, a plague on both their houses.
These people are getting too much at tention at the expense of the mod erates.
And because the moderate view is iust not being heard these days, I think there is real danger that normal pro
gress towards self-government, or dependence, or whatever, will get ( of hand.
It’s already getting so much t way that anybody who dares co out with a moderate view is label a reactionary. If you happen to th: that New Guinea is moving too f politically, then don’t say so. You obviously been there too long; you a paternalist.
Don't say so
If you happen to think that J Blow, the Member for Ramu, is Bighead and a menace, then do say so. Obviously you’re a wh supremicist.
You’re not to be constructiv critical in New Guinea these days,
eak from experience, or even use ur commonsense. If you lived jre before the war, don’t admit it.
If you don’t know which way the untry is heading, then don’t let on blicly, or you’ll be labelled a fence ter, or a gradualist.
Don’t be moderate. Be extreme! 1 don’t know what the New lineans are supposed to have done us that we are doing this to them, t I think it’s time we got our feet the ground again. Certainly a little 5 political hysteria in New Guinea needed, please. More work at the iss roots, and a little less yap. >Ve get enough wordage from the ffessional political opportunists in UN these days without putting our own smokescreen and being t behind it. -et’s hear the moderate majority. ♦ * ♦ ( , FY account of Tonga’s coronation L in the August issue gets a mding this month (p. 61) from a [ney correspondent who is dis •ointed in me. I won’t comment it, because Mr. Booth is entitled his interpretation of my material, 1 I only wish more readers would what they think more often. It noteworthy that Mr. Booth lives Sydney, for it is my experience t Islanders are reluctant letter ters, both in their personal lives in the public prints. lowever, I do want to defend my pw Pressmen at the coronation inst Mr. Booth’s charge that some nded the Royal Kava ceremony ired in gaudy shorts and T-shirts”, loesn’t happen to be true.
Raised temperatures
yhat helped raise Press tempera 's at that ceremony was the mis m belief by many visitors that gaudily dressed types wandering ut the areas supposedly reserved the Press were in fact Pressmen. he accredited correspondents had le a point of being correctly >sed for the kava ceremony, and tested vehemently to palace rds against the ring-ins who were ng them a bad name. On this occasion the guards acted and ily banished one specially oxious character off a visiting