ANOTHER HAWAII?

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 210, 6 September 1927, Page 6

ANOTHER HAWAII?

"Given the right esprit." said the I>v. A. W. McMillan, 4rack in Auckland from Fiji, "the colony should become The Hawaii of (he .South Pacific." Apparently Mr. McMillan, who lias been working among the Indians in Fiji, regards the islands as the rightful field for the Oriental races; the general trend of his remarks indicates that his watchword is "Fiji for the Indian"."' The "esprit de corps" for which he hopes is not likely to commend itself to the white people who are being swamped out by the rising Hood of Indians in business as well as in land occupation. The reverend gentleman's aspiration to see Fiji another Hawaii is scarcely a happv one from cither the white man's or the Fijian'* point of view. Hawaii is an object lesson and a warning to the English-speaking world and to all Polynesia. Big capital certainly has made big profits in the group, but what of the human factor? The Hawaiian race has been ruined by admixture with Orientals; it is a pitiful hybrid to-day. Hawaii, though under the American flag, is practically a Japanese colony. Japan, in the event of war with the U.S.A., would probably find very little difficulty in capturing the group. The race problem in Fiji is sufficiently alarming to those who have watched the evil effects that followed the wholesale introduction of the lowest class of Indians to work the sugar plantations and the failure to repatriate them. New Zealand and Australia are both concerned in the destiny of a group so close to them; to this extent, at any rate, that they do not want to see it become another Hawaii, no matter how enthusiastically some Indian-admirers may desire to see Hindus and other Orientals replace both white* and Polynesians. —TANGIWAI."