SAMOANS' REQUESTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 68, 22 March 1938, Page 6

SAMOANS' REQUESTS.

There is published to-day a letter from Mr. O. F. Nelson, objecting to the, "Star's" advocacy of the rejection by the Government of the proposal that the police force in Western Samoa should "revert to what it was before the New Zealand occupation." Mr. Nelson asserts that "not one German soldier, as such, was ever sent to Samoa, and the Police Department was confined to Samoans, with one white man in charge." The implication, of course, is that all was happy and peaceful under the German regime. Mr. Nelson know 3 Samoan history better than that. He will remember the occasion, in 1909, when German rule was seriously challenged, and the Governor was compelled to cable for a fleet of German warships, which arrived from the China station. There followed the deportation of twelve Samoans, who remained in exile until NeAV Zealand occupied Samoa. In the face of such recorded facts it is idle to suggest that the Germans ruled without force. We repeat that the Administrator must in the last resort have an adequate dependable force to assert the authority of the mandatory Power. Mr. Nelson does no service to the Samoan people, or to the Government, with which he has promised to co-operate, by suggesting that New Zealand methods are ."more militaristic" than those of the Germans, iHe ought to be aware that by a considerable section of opinion in New Zealand the present, methods are regarded as too easy-going. If that is a mistaken impression, the Samoans and their advisers can destroy it by ceasing to treat every concession as a stimulus to for more.