HALF-CASTES IN SAMOA

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26886, 12 November 1952, Page 2

HALF-CASTES IN SAMOA

STATEMENT MADE BY MRF. L. A. GOTZ

“ ILL-CONSIDERED AND UNEXPECTED ATTACK”

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 11. A statement made in the House of Representatives last month by Mr F. L. A. Gotz (Government, Otahuhu) regarding the “problem of the half-caste in Western Samoa" has provoked a strongly-worded reply by a Samoan newspaper.

The statement "would cause feelings of distinct annoyance among the important section of Western Samoa’s community against whom the words of Mr Gotz are such an ill-considered and unexpected attack,” states an editorial in the “Samoan Bulletin.”

Mr Gotz had said that the New Zealand Government would have to be constantly on guard against allowing the half-castes “who have great acquisitive power and ability to learn” eventually to dispossess the Samoans and control the country. “ A statement about a problem —whether real or imaginary—existent in Samoa by a man with as wide and intimate knowledge of the territory and its people as Mr Gotz unfortunately carries with it a tone of authority sufficient to impress a distorted and inaccurate view on New Zealand’s parliamentarians and people,’.’ continues the editorial. It states that following so closely the debate on the Indians in Fiji, Mr Gotz’s statement might have led some New Zealanders to regard the Samoan halfcastes in much the same derogatory light as the Fiji-Indians. “Nothing is further from the truth,” the article says. “In Fiji the Indians are foreigners who have invaded the country and grown in numbers to the point where they represent the largest racial proportion of the population. “The Samoan half-caste ... is as much a Samoan as the Samoan himself. Samoa is the country of his birth. It is his home and there should be no one to dispute his right to full and free citizenship and participation in commercial and political affairs.” The editorial concludes by stating that the half-castes were dominant commercially because their mixed blood made it easy for them to understand the ways of Samoan and European alike. They would be the only people capable of carrying much of the administrative burden when selfgovernment was attained