FIJI AND SAMOA

Evening Post, Issue 29, 4 February 1935, Page 10

FIJI AND SAMOA

ADMINISTRATIONS PRAISED

..J n -2 11 edit°rial article recently the1 Pacific. Islands Monthly,", published' in Sydney, observed that too much praise could not be given to the men who had guided -Fiji and Western Samoa through recent difficult years. Sir Murchison Fletcher," the article continued, "has had a certain amount: * he£ in the flourishing condition1 of the Fiji sugar industry, but the' burden he has had to assume in supervising the public finances of the Solomons, Gilbert, and Ellice, Tonga and New Hebrides groups 'since the': collapse of the copra market can' only, be guessed at by unenvious outsiders. History should have something very flattering to say of this particular. High Commissioner. , "To the economic worries' of the depression period were added acute political - troubles, providing a really frightful, job for the New Zealand Administrator of, Samoa, General Hart.. There were a number of occasions during the past three years when a less able and less patient man inevitably ■ and easily would have caused; bloodshed in Samoa, embroiled Great Britain with the League of Nations, and discredited New Zealand. Instead, General Hart has brought Samoa to a condition of quiescence 'and comparative content—a thing that ■ seemed impossible a couple of years ago. He not only has done his work Sn a most praiseworthy manner; hie-also has done much to wipe out the memory of New Zealand's blunders in Samoa between 1924 and 1930."