SAMOA'S PROBLEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 18

SAMOA'S PROBLEMS

AN IMPARTIAL REVIEW

The first known white, man to set foot in Samoa,. La.-Perouse,^ declared tho islanders to be the happiest people in the world. Since then contact with European civilisation -has affected them in progressive stages. Missionary enterprise began in AB3O. The influence of the white traders followed. Internal dissension and native warfare led to visits by European warships whose ostensible' object was to, control the activities of whaling ships and of the white adventurers who had joined forces with the native communities. Political domination, economic development, and educational penetration were but a matter of.time. A lengthy period of political strife culminated in Germany and the United States partitioning the group. The United States took the eastern islands, which they still adminsfer;"'Germany received the western islands, now the mandated territory of Western Samoav under* Xew, Zealand control.' ' • What has been the.upshot is set out impartially and thoroughly by Dr.-Felrs M. Keesing .ia "Modern Samoa: Its Government and Changing Life" '(Allen and Unwin). Having reviewed the situation, he concludes that New. Ze"aland, with tho best motives, began-by giving the Samoans power and responsibility beyond the stage for which they were prepared. Dr/Keesing^s cohsidered opinion is that Samo'an destiny, cannot yet be put fully ,into . Samoan hands, for "the .islandsJaTe nowadays inevitably part of a larger' political world in which the islanders, however eager to stand upright1/ aid, in some cases, sanguine as. to their capacity to do so, are taking but the first tottering steps." Looking into the future, he sees the possibility of a united. Samoa, and, beyond that,' the, growth of a wider Polynesian consciousness and spirit, such as he has found quickened among the educated Maoris,1- who arc looking today with interest to their island cousins. Already educated' part-Samoans' have" caught this sense of wider relationship; and although the majority of the pure Samoans at present regard themselves as superior to any other island peoples,, this exelusiveness, the product of ignorance and isolation, must inevit-' ably pass. - I