TROPIC ISLANDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1938, Page 6

TROPIC ISLANDS.

PROVOCATIVE BOOK. NATURE'S LW MUST PREVAIL (By J.C.) In a thought-provoking book lately : published. "India and the Pacific,"' by C. F. Andrews (Allen and Unwin:. there are some j chapters of prophecy and warning on the ! subject of the white man's claim to domination jin tropical regions, especially in the .South Sea islands. Mr. Andrews an old resident |of India, and on several occasions he was asked by the people's leaders to go out to Fiji To inquire into tiie conditions of Indian labour there. It was largely through his advice that the indentured labour system was abolished. His investigations there and his travels in various, tropic areas convinced him That as he set® forth in his book, in the long run these islands of the Pacific bordering on the Equator belong by birthright to the tropical races of mankind. The 3i ■>t conn tries must come back to Them at last, just as Jamaica and Mauritius have already done. The European, he contends, cannot fight against Nature. •i"he Economic Factor. There will be always, Mr. Andrews concedes. a place in the tropics for those Europeans who, as in Fiji, have old family connections with such countries. British permanent residents, though fewer in numbers, may exercise a considerable moral and intellectual influence. "There are those who, belonging to the white race, have been able to thrive without loss of vigour, and to bring up children.' But these exceptions, he savs. only prove the rule. "The European may be able to live in a hot. moist climate, but lie cannot do his best work in it."' The European is always an exotic in such places, and he has to live as an exotic.- A European is at least four times as expensive as a man who is born in the tropics, ami the economic factor is the basis of his belief in the coming return of the darker-skinned races to the control of administration and business in the equatorbordering countries, whether island or continental. As a much-travelled and observant student of conditions in India and the Pacific and elsewhere. Mr. Andrews is convinced that the days of "white race"' expansion are really over as far a~ the British are concerned. "Already warnings." he writes, "'are being given us (not in Britain alone) of a rapidly falling birth rate, which will mean in many directions a drawing in instead of a sending out. It is importible to hold one quarter of the earth's surface and people it anew with a diminishing race." Rights of Self-Government. Mr. Andrews' views on European methods of administration in the South Seas, as set forth in this book, are worth the attention of the New Zealand Government and all interested in the control of Samoa. The right of the people of such a country to govern themselves is strongly championed. It rests on sound principles, the justice and wisdom of which cannot lie demolished by questions of expediency. Tt is significant that the Western races have entirely lost the confidence of the vast majority of the people in the Orient and in other places where the whites assume an attitude of superioritv. India must in the long run secure complete powers of self-government. The nuestion inevitably arise=. when will New Zealand concede to the Samoans the full power* to which birthright entitles them? It cannot seriously be armed that the white races manage their affairs better than the South Sea islander can. Primitive or scrni-l-rimitive man in Polynesia is far superior in behaviour to the eivilir-ed barbarians of the great nations. The kingdom of Tonga. | left, to lier-clf. with inn a touch of advi--e j from a resident British official, is a little model of a self-controlled nation, content j under the man a of a Brit'-h protectorate, i could- do a- well it v:iti"o Helf-gove r n- j meat if given the opportunity under similar ! protectorate. i