Up Front

with the Publisher

Although it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, the sudden interest dis played in the welfare of the South Pacific Islands as a result of recent Russian over tures in this part of the world is a fairly sad commentary on international politics.

The Russian Ambassador pays his respects to Tonga, so Australia, New Zealand and the United States get upset.

They are going to do more for Polynesia, they say, just to show them that they don’t really need Russian help to build an inter national airport in Tonga, and they don’t really need a Russian fishing base. (Japanese, perhaps, but not Russian!) New Zealand Prime Minister Muldoon seems to have got almost hysterical about the threat and is making far friendlier noises to the Islanders than the ones he had been making only a few months earlier, when he tightened up on Island im migrants to New Zealand.

If the Islands get more attention and more help from their big neighbours as a result of the Russian scare, then that’s good.

But the way it has happened rather suggests that Big Brother wants to safeguard the welfare of the Islanders only because he feels the poor savages haven’t got enough commonsense of their own to avoid being trapped by the Big Russian Bear. A patronising approach this. Why don t they simply admit they are concern ed for themselves?

Tongans, especially, have shown in their long history that they are more than capable of playing both sides against the middle and coming out on top. Tonga has long since learned to take all the advan tages offered by its Western neighbours without losing its independence. Tongans are Tongans. They are not likely to throw away their freedom for the Russians, any more than they did for Britain during their long and close association over three quarters of a century.

King Taufa’ahau is a lot shrewder than some people might think; and when the time comes for Crown Prince Tupouto’a to take over the reins, we will find him no different. In this, the Tongan Crown reflects the practical aspects of the Tongan people.

There is an additional safeguard in

Polynesia against takeover by the Russians. That is the strong Christian adherence of the Islanders, and I don’t think this should be underestimated.

Neither Tongans nor Samoans would feel very comfortable in close association with a godless people.

The Islanders may well allow Russia to give them aid, but I don’t think we should be especially disturbed about its effect on them. As for its effect on us, that’s surely not the Islanders’ problem. ★ ★ ★ Rejoice in Freedom is the autobiography of George Farwell, to be published in the next couple of months by Nelson’s, in Melbourne. I wrote to George recently to tell him that I had read the proofs and I thought it was his best book yet full of colour and interest. PIM readers will be able to judge this for themselves when we publish in November a large extract from it about George’s pre-war days in Tahiti, when he was a young man without money but with the keen and compassionate eye that made him a celebrated writer.

And now news comes from Adelaide, South Australia, that George suddenly is dead. Dead of a heart attack and he won’t be at the launching of his best book yet.

Fiji and Tahiti knew George, and his wife Noni, well. They were next hoping to live in the Cook Islands, and another fine book would have emerged from that.

George’s Last Days in Paradise, recalling

some of his early adventures in Tahiti, and of some of his later ones, is still one of the most readable of the thousands of books written on Tahiti.

Rejoice in freedom, George.

Stuart Inder