EMPIRE POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 200, 23 August 1940, Page 9

EMPIRE POLICY.

PACIFIC PROBLEMS.

"MUST MAKE SACRIFICES." The problems facing Britain in her colonial adminietration in the Pacific were dealt with moet informatively by Dr. Raymond __Firth, New Zealand-born reader in anthropology at the University of London, in a lecture to the Royal Empire Society. Dr. Firth, in the course of his work, has made researches in most of the territories under British rule in this area and he has recently come here from Malaya. The types of control and the aims directing it were complex and varied, he said. There were Dominions, colonies, wotectoratee, mandated territories and other variants of those types of control each with a different set of circumstances to be dealt with. The aims of the administration were governed also l>y three main lines:—(l) The policy of economic development; (2) the policy of strategic or political control; (3) the humanitarian or ethical policy. It was a combination of those aims that entered: into the adminietration of all British possessions around thie area. The humanitarian approach did not enter into the policies of older empire*, and it did not enter into the policies of some expanding nations of to-day. It was a policy that had been expressed by Mr. Nash 10 years ago at a conference concerning Pacific relations. He had said, "All parties agree that the interest of the natives is paramount." It was a conception of Imperial trusteeship which, he said, was not held by Germany and Japan, for instance. Dr. Firth summarised his views on the way in which that conception of Imperial administration had been carried out by saying that we had brought the natives new goods which were of value to them, and we had brought an economic system that enabled them to get those goods. At the same time we had introduced complexity into their way of living. We had brought them peace, with a set of laws that were at times not always comprehensible to them. We had brought them medicine, but also some new diseases, and we had brought some new political ideas that had had the effect in some cases of introducing some disturbing elements into village life And we had brought a new faith, but not always all that should go with the faith. The position was, he said, that purely administrative problems could be overcome with understanding and hard work, but we had to make a choice in the full application of the ethical side. We would have, to be prepared to make some economic sacrifices if we wished to carry out our stated ideas, or else apply the more ruthless efficiency of Imperial ideas based solely on economic development.