(Pacific) Happiness

Life, Liberty And

The Pursuit Of

The people of the Pacific Islands are wiser, more tolerant, more considerate than peoples of other regions. They have not burned libraries, shouted ob scenities, stoned officials of foreign lands or denied represen tation to any significant view

point. Therefore, the region gives

promise of achieving and retain

ing greater political and social

progress than that prevailing in any other.

This is the considered opinion of Mr. Carlton Skinner, Senior Com missioner for the United States on the South Pacific Commission.

Mr. Skinner was, between 1949 and 1953, Governor of Guam, and it was as guest speaker at the Charter Day ceremonies of the University of Guam that he delivered his long, prepared speech in which he took a look into the future governments of the Pacific Islands. Charter Day was December 17.

Although he did not see the march toward democratic independence altogether as roses, roses all the way, he did not see any insurmountable difficulties either.

Although he hinted that there were still Pacific problems to be overcome he did not expand on them —although some people outside his captive audience feel they are con siderable.

“My thesis,” he said, “is that democracy can live, grow and bring forth the fruit of public good and freedom, only in a soil of four elements. No one of these can be absent and permit democracy to live.”

His four elements are: Universal franchise; the secret ballot; two or more political parties; and a judiciary independent of the excutive and legislative branches of government.

He went on to outline how the various Pacific Island territories could embrace these principles and still bend them to local traditions. He believed that territories might follow the patterns of the nations under whose tutelage they had been for so long and emerge as an Australian type democracy, French type, British or United States.

He could foresee the day, too,

when the common interests of Guam, the US Trust Territory of Micronesia and American Samoa might con stitute the proud and self-reliant 51st State of the United States.

Yet, he felt, with all these “dif fering forms of government for different political and cultural traditions, there is an underlying unity among the Pacific Islands people”.

“It is not ethnic. The differences between Micronesian, Melanesian and Polynesian in cultural patterns, social organisation, land tenure, etc., are substantial. The presence in these islands of native-born per manent residents who are of Cauca sian or Oriental ancestry adds another difference.

“The unity will not be of creed or colour. It will be a unity found among free men and women, govern ing themselves with freedom and justice and with the power to change their governments to adapt to chang ing problems—a freedom not univer sally found in any other definable geographic region of the world.”