BOYCOTT IN SAMOA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 39, 16 February 1928, Page 9

BOYCOTT IN SAMOA.

MAU POLICEMEN ACTIVE. TRYING TO PREVENT TRADE. SEARCH SHOPKEEPERS' PREMISES. According to the Samoa "Times," the Mau has declared a boycott against all shopkeepers in Western Samoa. In Apia, Samoans, wearing uniforms of purple and bearing big sticks, have been preventing Samoans from entering local stores to make purchases. These uniformed men are known as "Mau policemen."

After referring to boycotting generally, and more particularly against itself, the "Times" goes on to say:— "The Mau police, however, are much more forceful in tlieir • methods, and, strange to tell, they are interfering in the trade of storekeepers who once were regarded as being their strong*.. supporters. One Mau policeman forcibly took away from a Samoan an article which he had purchased a minute earlier and threw it into the shop.of the seller. That irate Individual promptly sallied forth with ail ax-handle in his hand, and forthwith tho Mau policeman -lit out for his fale. •At the store of a still more . prominent supporter of the Mau, a Mau policeman was found in the back premises searching for possible Samoan customers, and was cast outside by an indignant shareholder. Truly things are moving around in old Samoa, and yesterday's boon companions are to-day's antagonists. It is said that the Samoan reasoning on this matter is that if the Samoan cuts no copra and spends no money on imported goods, the Government must come to a standstill through lack of revenue. Evidently the Mau doesn't know that (if the worst came to the worst) Now Zealand out of her own revenues could run Samoa for a hundred years and never miss the money; run every member of the Mau from Samoa to the Antarctic; and run up, incidentally, ft bill which sooner or later the Mau and its supporters would have to pay. Mau foolishness never was better exemplified than by its latest action. And it is only fair comment to add that the greatest present sufferers from the boycott are getting back a physic of their own prescription. Yet that it should be administered by such hands is unkind, surely. But possibly the Samoan Mau's real spring of action is a resentment borii of the failure of its lato friends to deliver the political goads as per their own specifications."