Administration of Samoa

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22307, 22 January 1938, Page 12

Administration of Samoa

In a letter which we print this morning Mr C. R. N. Mackie takes us to task for opinions expressed in a recent leading article on the administration of the Samoan mandate. Mr Mackie's implication that the main purpose of our article*was to "belittle" the efforts of the present Government to improve condition? in Samoa is unfair, as also is his implication that we have been blind to past mistakes in the administration of the mandate. In 1928 we dealt as frankly as Mr Mackie could wish with "the blundering methods of the Administra"tion and the Government" and added that " if the brains of the Administration . . . had " been as good as the moral intention, the Mau " mischief-making would never have been " worth a paragraph in the news." In 1929 we advocated returning the Samoan mandate to Great Britain on the grounds that New Zealand was apparently unable to produce civil servants of the calibre necessary for the difficult task of administering native peoples. In 1930 we said: "New Zealand has failed to govern " Samoa well because it does not know enough " about Samoa and the Samoans, and has not " even applied with sufficient care and skill " what it has learned about other Polynesian "peoples, the Maoris and the Rarotongans." Quotations such as these could be multiplied. We are, therefore, in substantial agreement with most of what Mr Mackie says about the earlier years of the mandate. It is not clear whether he disagrees with our contention that the quality of government in Samoa " must de- " pend in the long run upon the ability of the " Administrator and his staff and upon the ex- " tent to which they possess the confidence and " respect of the Samoans." Mr Mackie is welcome to the view that our repeated protests against the Government's failure to appoint an Administrator (the office has been vacant for more than two years) are " a little foible." We do not feel competent to pronounce upon the work of the Acting-Administrator.