AMERICAN SAMOA

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 134, 4 December 1930, Page 8

AMERICAN SAMOA

A MIDDLE COURSE

COMMISSION'S DECISIONS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SAN FBANCISCO, Bth Nov. The United States Samoa Commis- J sion, which has just returned from Tv- j tuila, believes it has obtained a fairly comprehensive expression of the desires of the natives, according to the Chairman, Senator Hiram Bingham, of Connecticut. "Tho chiefs are obviously willing to accept our decision as to their o.rganic act, no matter what it might be," ho said. "There was evident satisfaction with the tentative conclusions we reached, which met the desires of neither the extreme navy group nor those of tho extreme anti-navy group. "There arc threo views of tho Samoan problem. One is represented by those who would set up an ethnological park in the islands with rigid barriers against the intrusion of other civilisations. Tho second comes from those who would turn the Samoans loose to work out their own destiny without any safeguards other than those they might j set up themselves; this, I believe, would I result in much suffering. "The third view, and ono which the Commission has chosen to favour, is a middle course, and in the tentative organic act, the principles of which were adopted at Pago Pago with the chiefs sitting with the Commission, we- believe we have provided a basis for the proper sort of development." Senator Bingham added that it would be at least eighteen months and perhaps two years before the new laws for Samoa would be drafted and passed by Congress. He praised the naval administration of the country, saying he believed those responsible had done "a marvellous .job," and had preserved Samoa for the Samoans in a way which is unique in the Pacific. "No Government is perfect," ho asserted, "but in an examination of the record of any city in the United States I doubt whether you would find less of arbitrary power and injustice than is shown in the record of the naval administration. "