SAMOA AGAIN

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 86, 8 October 1930, Page 10

SAMOA AGAIN

If the Leader of the Labour Party is sincerely anxious to promote peace in Samoa he is going a peculiar way about it. The natives have been promised full investigation of their grievances, with only one condition— they must acknowledge the-authority of the Administration. Already steps have been taken to give the Samoans a greater part in the management of their own affairs. If the peaceful progress thus made can be maintained there is every hope of complete reconciliation. The surest way to hinder such reconciliation., is to revive old grievances as Mr. Holland has done. It is not as if an autocratic unreasoning rule has been enforced. The Samban grievances have been investigated by Minister, Committee, and Commission, and there has been nothing disclosed that would warrant the continued defiance of the Administration. The only way that Mr. Holland can maintain his attitude is by holding that all the competent and judicial tribunals that have investigated Samoan affairs have been hopelessly incompetent and biased—from the Samoan Commission to the Mandates Commision lof the League of Nations.' If a new commission were appointed and failed to support Mr. Holland's view he would say the same about it —that it was biased. It could do no good, and, as Mr. Downie Stewart pointed out,' it would do great harm by reviving the sense of grievance. There has been far too much political party business in Parliamentary discussions of Samoa already. The best thing Parliament can do now is to leave the Administrator and the Samoans alone and not to spoil the prospects of peace as Mr. Holland is doing by I denying, that there is peace and claiming that the trouble has just been driven underground.