SOLOMON ISLANDS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 15, 12 October 1927, Page 10

SOLOMON ISLANDS

THEIR PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS GAUSE OF UNREST Dominion Special Service. Auckland, October 10. “There can be comparatively few places left in the world that are so primitive as the Solomon Islands, said Major H. S. Robinson, secretary of the Melanesian Mission, to-day, when referring to conditions as they -existed when he was there on a 9000 miles tour last year. Major Robinson called at the island of Mala, the scene of the massacres recently reported. He said that it was only a short while ago that the better class of white men went to the Islands in that part of the Pacific and carried Christianity to the natives in the interior. Many of the tribes were entirely heathen and had never come in direct contact with whites. The only law they knew was the law of retaliation. Civilisation had in those parts been confined to the coastal tribes and the work was divided amongst the Melanesian, Presbyterian, and Methodist missions. Most of the trouble, Major Robinson thought, arose from unfair labour recruiting (“blackbirding”), arid from interference with native customs. Labour recruiting vessels had frequented the waters endeavouring to secure natives for whom the adventurous white man was amply repaid at so much a head. The methods adopted to obtain the desired number of labourers were various and sometimes left much to be desired.