NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 185, 8 August 1927, Page 6

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES.

The reverence of modern business-govern-ment for that sacrosanct term Organisation is probably responsible as much as anything else for the unrest among the natives of Samoa. The military Administrator is such a perfect organiser, and his officials are such perfect copies of their very excellent chief, and they have organised the people so assiduously, that some of those people, who are, after all, only human, are getting rather fed-up with it all. They are bein* organised into this and that, and are being told so insistently and often what they should do in oider. to become the. World's Nicest and Best Native Race, that it is scarcely to be wondered at if some of them become a trifle restive and long for the old regime before either Germans or British ruled and domesticated their lives for their..

There is sound wisdom in some remarks on the government of native races made latelv by the Right Hon. W. G. Ormsby-Gore, M.P., Assifftant-Secretary of State for the Colonies, at a London meeting. Mr. Ormsby-Gore read a paper on the people and the conditions of life and government in Nigeria. "My personal belief." he said, "is that West Africa will accommodate itself fairly happily to the economic changes provided we proceed very cautiously over political and judicial changes. To my mind the most disintegrating force operating in West Africa is the introduction of English law and English procedure in lieu of long-established native law and custom. Nothing tends more to undermine native traditions, society and organisation than the substituion of European for native legal forms." In Northern Nigeria, the Minister said, the undoubted success of British administration was in the main due to the fact that the Government had interfered as little as possible with the native judicial system. Concerning Nigera generally, now consolidated in one Administration, he admitted that "wo are pouring new wine into very old bottles," and the task of the Government must be to prevent the development under white-man's rule having too rapidly disruptive tendencies.

Such an address as that of Mr. Orms by-Gore's stands out in strong contrast to the Obey-or-Be-Damned attitude of some Ministers of the Crown we know so well. The Nigerians and the Samoans are dissimilar races, but the general principle remains the same. If it is wise policy to go slow with disruptive changes in African communities, how much more necessary is eueh caution with a dignified and intelligent and susceptible race like the Samoans! Health and sanitation having been atended to, one would like to see a discreet easing-off of the officialsim which regards the Samoans as beings to be organised and improved and taught how to produce more and more and still more, white-man fashion. Easy on the reins! —TALOFA.