"Formidable"

Judy Tudor

I was astounded to learn from Dr. John Gunther’s tribute on PlM’s 40th birthday (August, p. 87) that either he or Colonel J. K. Murray found me “formid able” in 1946. I’m sure I was then young, innocent and willing to be impressed—virtues I’ve since shed along the way.

I can’t remember what the Administrator and I talked about but I’m sure I didn’t tell him that I’d been at Maprik in 1928.

Fair go—l was then still at school in NZ. I saw Maprik first in 1936, when it was still in— or, anyway, on the fringe of— uncontrolled territory. The people were primitive, naked and dis

tinctly unfriendly.

What I remember most from my 1946 call at Port Moresby was that the Administrator sent a junior officer, with his compli ments and a car, to meet me at the airport. Such things still happen occasionally in out-of the-way British territories but it certainly has never happened to me again in Port Moresby. I see now that it was probably part of Colonel Murray’s campaign to flatten me with psychology. And all these years I’ve cherished the incident as a “kind thought” f

—Judy Tudor.