PROBLEM OF SAMOA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 26 May 1930, Page 11

PROBLEM OF SAMOA

PRIDE OF THE NATIVES

"A MATTER OF TOUCH"

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, 15th April.

Two articles in "The Times" on White Kule in Samoa by Miss M. Perham, Rhodes Travelling Fellow (of Oxford University) have given rise to editorial comment in that journal. The writer of the leading article surveys the events of recent years in the Mandated Territory. Taking his cue from Miss Porham's articles, he says: —

"The trouble has been primarily a conflict of temperaments. In tho early days of tho mandate the New Zealand Administration made powerful .enemies among the copra merchants by' raising the prico paid to the native producers. But those enemies would not have achieved their success if there had not been a good deal that was uncongenial to the Samoans in'the methods and manners of their new rulers. A recent Commission from New Zealand has criticised i: outspoken terms the manner in which Government appointments in Samoa were filled in tho early days of the mandate! Tho concrete results —in the way of health improvement, for instance—that won for New Zealand special compliments from the Mandates Commission, had their unfortunate side when zeal for measurable triumphs, led to haste and impatience with cherished and traditional Samoan ways. Samoans aye not alone in being temperamental in tho presence of social reformers bent on their improvement, but their recalcitrance has been an m-itating mystery to many Now Zealandors conscious that their country is endeavouring, at con.sidablo expense, to establish a high tradition of disinterested rule.

"There is special significance iv the expressed opinion of Sir Apirana Ngala, the Maori statesman, that, if only the dignity of both parties can be saved, all should yet be well. ■It was probably the- successful avoidance of any Maori problem in Now Zealand that made- the Administration over-confident about Samoa, and certainly too little attention seems to have been,paid to' the punctilios which the Samoans, separated from the Maoris for a thousand years', have developed an(J cherish, for their sunny good nature is combined with a deep pride. In short, successful rulo in Samoa is chiefly a matter.of touch. Nature has done so much for tho Samoans that there is no need of the regimentation that less fortunate peoples must endure, and the martinet is as much out of place'as central heater."