Book Reviews

What this book doesn't say about the P-NG Anglicans

In this century we’ve grown so used to wholesale battle, murder and sudden death that the killing of a handful of Anglican missionaries in Papua-New Guinea during World War II might seem to be a matter for little sentiment or comment.

Yet somehow, reading The Road to Gona, one is made to feel with fresh force the sheer horror, wicked ness and pity involved in the deliberate killing of even a single human being.

The potted biographies of these seven men and four women reveal them as pretty ordinary people, really; nor, by world standards of brutality, were their deaths particu larly outrageous just ordinarily messy, with swords, bayonets, bullets and beheadings.

And yet again, behind the necessarily scanty details, there hovers on the fringes of one’s con sciousness the gleam of a fearful splendour, the impenetrable mystery of martyrdom and what it’s all about.

Eight of the 11 martyrs died in the Northern District of Papua, not so very far from Gona, where two of the women were stationed and from which this book takes its title.

Handed over

Perhaps the most tragic and salutory aspect of their deaths is the fact that although many Papuans fed, sheltered and hid the fugitive missionaries, all seven of the ex patriate martyrs in that area were handed over to the Japanese by the local people.

This is a dark factor on which the book sheds little light.

We are told that the people were afraid of Japanese reprisals if they helped the missionaries; we are told that one character bore a grudge against the white man and resented the influence of the missionaries; and we are told that the villagers at one place took a cargo-cultish view of the Japanese and felt that “the day of the Europeans in Papua was over”.

But there is no attempt to discuss

in depth the real thinking and feeling and predicament of the local people.

One sentence, though, voices by implication the opinion expressed by many churchmen that the betrayals might never have happened if more money had been available to back a fuller and more extensive evangelisation of the area before the war.

Terrible retribution

A more serious failure of the book is the omission of any reference to the terrible retribution with which the local people were afterwards visited by the Australian authorities, when many who were thought to have been involved in the martyrdoms were hunted down and executed—executed, moreover, in the face of opposition and pleas for mercy by the then Bishop of New Guinea, Bishop Philip Strong, who was deeply distressed by the course which the white man’s justice was taking.

To many people the whole story of the New Guinea martyrs remains a nonsense and a foolishness— rather fine and noble, maybe, but still a nonsense and a foolishness.

After all, why should missionaries stay on when others may and do, rightly, reasonably and without cowardice, leave?

Why, indeed? Well, this book will provide you with the ethos of the thing, if not the full answer, in chapter four, where an account is given of Bishop Strong’s broadcast to his staff early in 1942. ; • I have from the first felt,” he said, “that we must endeavour to carry on our work in all circum stances no matter what the cost may ultimately be to any of us in dividually.

“God expects this of us. The

church at home, which sent us out, will surely expect it of us. The universal church expects it. The tradition and history of missions re quires it of us. Missionaries who have been faithful to the uttermost and are now at rest are surely expect ing it of us. The people whom we serve expect it of us.” ‘No one requires us to leave. . . .

But even if anyone had required us to leave, we should then have had to obey God rather than men.

We could not leave unless God, who called us, required it of us, and our spiritual instinct tells us he would never require such a thing at such an hour. . . .”

What the book does not tell us is that this speech and the bishop’s beliefs about how missionaries should behave in time of danger, was to become the subject of criticism, some of it bitter, even though his staff seem to have shared his views and to have stayed put voluntarily.

This, then, the story of the martyrs, forms the central action ot the book, which is a highly com pressed history of the Anglican Church in Papua-New Guinea.

Though the book is certainly worth reading, some may find it dis appointing, frustrating even, because it falls between two stools: it is neither a full exposition of the martyrs’ drama, nor a full exposition of the church’s history.

One has the feeling that the rest of the book has just been tagged, fore and aft, onto the martyrs’ story.

This suspicion is bolstered by the

information that the book began with the work of former missionaries Dorothea Tomkins and Brian Hughes, both of whom had written at some length about the martyrs.

The Australian Board of Missions, interested, “asked L. C. Rodd to compile a single-volume account based on the work” of these two.

Thus, though it is their names which appear on the cover, the book is in fact the compilation of L. C. Rodd. who “has incorporated the text of the other manuscripts in some sec tions and in other places he has recast their story to fit the overall perspective which the ABM asked him to adopt”.

The idea was to show “for the first time in one story how the missionaries who stayed and died

were fulfilling the ministry of all who had served in New Guinea”.

Had this book been submitted to the territory church for a reasonable period, the authorities and their advisors would, one hopes, have spotted a number of errors and mis conceptions which will now tend to be perpetuated by those not in a position to know otherwise and to discredit the book—and possibly the church also—in the eyes of experts.

For example: “Always, within the area allotted to it, the Anglican Mission has set its face against the use of Pidgin and Motu”. This gives a rather false impression, though until a few years ago it would have been the in-thing to say, about Pidgin anyway.

What probably is true is that for many years the Anglican church looked down its nose at Pidgin be cause it was working in areas where Pidgin hadn’t penetrated and so had no practical experience of the language.

Church expanded

But as soon as the church ex panded into Pidgin speaking areas, and as Pidgin spread through the territory, the lingua franca was picked up and is now widely used in Anglican work. It was, for in stance, one of the four main languages employed at this year’s Diocesan Conference.

Motu is also occasionally used, though local vernaculars are more often employed. Again, the ship in which two of the martyrs died is described as having been sunk by aircraft, whereas it was actually sunk by shelling from a submarine.

There is also a (perhaps un intentionally) disparaging reference to the Kwato Mission which, though small and, to some people, quaintly named, is justly famous for its very fine and remarkably progressive work.

Having said all that it is only fair to add that this book is written in an easy, readable style and gives quite a good picture of what the church is trying to do in Papua-New Guinea. If nothing else, it points out the need which exists for a much longer book on the Anglican church in the territory, with a thorough discussion of the church’s mistakes, failures and problems, as well as its aims, ideals and very considerable achievements.—SY. (THE ROAD TO GONA. Angus and Robertson Ltd. $3.25.)