MANDATE OF SAMOA

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22194, 10 September 1937, Page 12

MANDATE OF SAMOA

NEW ZEALAND’S POLICY CRITICISED “FAILURE TO TRAIN MEN FOR ADMINISTRATIVE WORK” The failure of New Zealand to build up a body of trained men ter. the highly specialised work of administration among native peoples was said by Mr A. J. Campbell, lecturer in history at the Christchurch Training College, to be a Probable reason for the weaknesses of the New Zealand administration m Samoa. Mr Campbell was addressing the Workers’ Educational Association at its meeting last evening, the address being one of a series on international problems. It was the desire of New Zealand statesmen in the early that New Zealand should become the centre of a Pacific empire, said Mr Campbell. This had begun wu Grey and had continued with Vogel and Seddon. All New Zealand had got was the Cook Islands, and since the war, the mandate of Samoa. New Zealand should have been admirably suited to deal with the Samoans, who were a Polynesian people like the Maoris. Yet it had found in Samoa a bag of troubles. The troubles in Samoa were not merely caused by dissatisfied planters. They were to a fair extent caused by the transition of one of the less advanced races into twentieth century culture. _ “We have never trained in New Zealand anyone in the special line of looking after native peoples, said Mr Campbell. “That, perhaps, is where our administration of Samoa has fallen down. With the Maoris here and in the Cook Islands New Zealand could have trained a special service of men with knowledge of native ways and psychology. Yet no training was built up for this specialised administrative work. Both the Maoris and the Samoans have needed very specialised help.”