The More Things Change

Out Of The Past

A 50th anniversary selection of news and opinions from the pages of the August 1938 issue o/Pacific Islands Monthly.

BEFORE long, there will be far reaching adjustments of territorial boundaries. To what extent are they likely to affect Pacific territories?

Today, the world is an armed camp, echoing to the tramp of marching men and, more significantly, to the whirr of aeroplane engines. If the nations go into a general dogfight, the issue will remain maybe for years completely in doubt; and it would be idle to speculate here about the future of the Pacific. But if the world’s international problems (which, reduced to their common factors, are simply matters of land ownership, colonisation and freer trade) are to be settled peacefully, then de cisions must be taken that will affect im portant Pacific territories.

Before there can be hope of peace, two things must happen. The injustices of the Versailles Treaty must be removed; and the nations that control vast colonial Empires must find a formula through which the landless nations especially Germany, Japan and Italy can be given free access to new lands for the settlement of their ex cess population, new markets for their goods, and new sources of raw material. ★ ★ ★ ASM ALL party of native police, led by Patrol Officer Francis H Moy, was suddenly attacked by natives in thick bush on the Upper Liron River, a tributary of the Markham, about 50 miles from Lae, New Guinea, early in August.

A shower of arrows was the first warn ing of attack and a native constable was wounded. The police rallied quickly and drove off the attackers with rifle fire, dur ing which one of the hostile natives was killed. Mr Moy got his party into a semi protected position and kept off the hostile natives with rifle fire. He reported the at tack on his portable radio set and District Officer Taylor, with police reinforce ments, went out by aeroplane to Kaiapit, a landing ground in the vicinity of the Liron River.

It was reported on August 6 that Mr Taylor had returned to Salamaua with the wounded constable and a bush native, whom Mr Moy’s party had arrested on a charge of murder. Mr Taylor reported that Mr Moy’s party was now in no danger, and was carrying on.

A EUROPE AN planter shot and wounded in the leg a male half caste whom he had caught in a love tryst with his native wife close to his plan tation. The planter apparently scared the guilty couple. His wife grabbed the gun, with the result that the discharge lodged in the man’s leg.

It is stated that the planter had known of the affair for some time and had warned the half-caste to keep away. ★ ★ ★ AN Australian reviewer describing a new book on Tahiti by one Cecil Lewis says: “It is, admittedly, a very tourist-soiled Eden, but the remains of an Eden none theless. It was sufficiently like the Eden of Mr Lewis’s imagination to astonish and dazzle him, so that he writes like one who reels under the impact of some stunning blow. He feels that these carefree, beauti ful, and somewhat indolent Tahitians had hit upon a way of life that really did ensure peace and happiness for all”.

The reviewer, who apparently knows Tahiti, says: “It was in Tahiti that Mr Lewis took leave of his youth, and in the record ing thereof he has merely temporarily taken leave of his senses”. ★ ★ ★ THE period when the first men and women and children who were the progenitors of the great Polynesian race moved out from Indonesia in their narrow, low canoes is a moot point the as tute scientist will dodge if he can, but if cornered probably he might admit maybe late BC or early AD.

The evidence is based too much upon ancient and untrustworthy genealogies.

However, once the general movement out of Indonesia was under way, the evi dence became more convincing. It is at this point that Dr Peter H Buck (Te Rangi Hi roa), the New Zealand ethnologist, starts his new book Vikings of the Sunrise , a de scriptive study of Polynesia. Dr Buck is himself a Polynesian now, probably, the most famous living Maori.

Dr Buck neatly confines the Polyne sians in what he calls the Polynesian tri angle: that is, all that area embraced within a line drawn from Hawaii on the north down to Easter Island, then back across to New Zealand and up to Hawaii again. So

many thousands of square miles of the world’s greatest ocean are involved that it is little wonder that Captain James Cook described the race as the “most extensive nation on earth”. ★ ★ ★ RESIDENTS who have been in the islands long enough to have known the elder generations of Tahitians, their courtly manners and stately cere mony, the gracious hospitality that was their custom, the beauty and unique id iom of their native music, are most grati fied to learn of the measures initiated by the present Governor of French Oceania to preserve what is remaining of the old culture, restore to memory the ancient po etry, revive the splendour of the old cho rus singing, inspire in the younger Tahitians a pride in their ancestors and the history of their race, conserve and extend their native handicrafts and protect them in the ownership of their ancestral lands.

His excellency has recently designated two more islands Raivavae and Tubuai to be closed as places of residence to all except natives of those islands. ★ ★ ★ ANOTHER letter is to hand from Mr Marc T Greene, that world wandering American journalist who specialises in foreign affairs. During the past two or three years, he has written to PIM from parts of the world.

Recently, he has been in the Dutch East Indies. Writing from Sourabaya, he ex presses emphatic disagreement with opin ions expressed in PIM regarding the Japanese menace: “I do not believe that you need concern yourself much more over Japan. If she comes out of this China business without being broken altogether she will be too weakened to be any menace to anyone for a long time to come, if ever again. I hear, here, the most amazing stories of the hard ships of life in Japan now for the masses, and it is getting worse all the time.

“I do not in the least agree with you on Willard Price’s stuff. I think it is absolute rot. He sacrifices facts, accuracy, every thing, to the dollar quest and getting books out about every three months. He is also much on the Japanese side. I do not think his stuff is sound at all, and I reckon to know a little about Japan myself.” □