POLICY IN SAMOA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 96, 24 April 1928, Page 9

POLICY IN SAMOA.

ADMINISTRATOR'S DEFENCE.!

mau movement denounced

"BUILT UP ON INTIMIDATION.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, Monday.

"The gross misrepresentations that have been made not only in New Zealand, but also in other countries concerning Samoa are part and parcel of a deliberate and widely-organised plan on the part of a very small section of the community in Apia to defame New Zealand," declared Sir George Richardson, former Administrator of Samoa, in a statement which he issued to-day, on the eve of his departure for Geneva, where he is to represent the New Zealand Government at the sittings of the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.

Sir George said he had received an enormous number of letters asking him to review and reply to the charges made against the Administration, chiefly from political sources, but he was not going to do so. He was not a politician.

"It has been stated that interference with old Samoan customs was the cause | of this trouble. This is absolutely un-l true, for neither myself nor any previous New Zealand Administrator has changed any Samoan custom except at the request of the natives themselves, or with their concurrence. . . . My policy has been to very gradually eliminate evil customs, and to introduce gradually that which would be best for them, but not to dictate new laws without their consideration."

Dealing with the sale of the nativeproduced copra, Sir George said that from the outset of his administration he had been repeatedly requested by the natives to do for them what was done for their relatives in American Samoa — to take their copra and ensure for them a higher price than they were receiving from the traders. He had taken up the line that he would not compete with any trading concern, but that if the natives would produce high-class copra the Administration would ship it for them to London in the same way that it shipped high-class products for private European planters. That was all that had been done in the matter. Under the new system the natives had learned to produce copra which was paid the compliment on the London market of hwng regarded as of the highest quality from the South Seas.

In conclusion, Sir George pointed out that the natives were a very simple people. In any other territory the findings of the Royal Commission would have been accepted without further agitation. Encouraged by statements

published in the' vernacular in their own Press and by the statements of certain

people both in Samoa and in New Zealand a section of the natives was maintaining a state of unrest In order to have the matter taken to the highest authority. The Mau movement, he said, was built u|> on the threat of banishment and intimidation of the natives. The object of the agitators was certainly not to help the natives.

This interference by Europeans In native affairs had completely changed the social life of the Samoans. It had affected their villages, schools, and plan* tations because they had been led to believe that they need not clean their villages or work or pay taxes.