This Month

• Solomon Islands Holy Mama. The debate goes on 8 • Aviation Continental’s breakthrough in the air war over the Pacific is good news for the Islands’ tourist industry 13 • PNG Michael Somare stayed on top after November’s power struggle but he may not be as secure as before 15 • Margaret Mead The world’s best known anthropologist, whose name is synonymous with the Pacific, is dead 19 • Fiji November 16, says Labour Minister Toganivalu, was the ‘beginning of the end’ for Vatukoula’s gold mine 22 • New Caledonia Could the Loyalty Islands go it alone? 26 • France in the Pacific A Paris meeting has set the course for French policy in the Pacific 27 • New Hebrides Is the condominium a pawn in the European Common Market chess game? 28 • West Germany and PNG The links, past and present, between these two nations 28 • Yesterday A forthright Fijian’s view of the Europeans in his country in 1940 31 • Tonga The man behind Tonga’s ill-fated Bank of the South Pacific, John Meier, in November was in the care of Canada’s Mounties facing an extradition request by the US 51

Afterthoughts 17 Aviation 13 Books 47 Deaths 19, 59 Fiji 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 55 France 26, 27 Islands Press 41 Letters 8 Micronesia 26 New Hebrides 21, 25, 28 Niue 53 Pacific Report 11

PNG 13, 15, 20, 24, 25, 28 People 20 Philately 43 Political Currents 26 Shipping 63 Solomon Islands 8, 21 Tonga 20, 51, 55 • Tradewinds 51 Tropicalities 23 West Germany 28 Western Samoa 13, 14, 24 Yachts 60

Yesterday 24

Robert A. Brown . . . tough talking US aviation nego tiator

Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna ... a 1940 look at the whities

John Meier ... held in Canada

Margaret Mead . . . dead at 76