DESIRE IN SAMOA

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 12

DESIRE IN SAMOA

SEPARATION FROM N.Z.

WORSE CONFUSION SINGE GOOD-WILL VISIT

AN EDITOR'S SPEECH

United Tress Association— By Electric leloerapli—Copyright. (Received September 16, 10 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Mr. R. W. Robson, editor of the "Pacific Islands Monthly," in an address at the Polynesian Club, criticised the administration of Western Samoa by the New Zealand Government and said that while he was in Samoa recently he heard much talk among non-official Europeans and among half-castes of a desire to be separated from New Zealand and attached to the administration of the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific (the British Colonial Office), whose headquarters were at Suva.

Mr. Robson added that the good-will mission that was sent to Western Samoa recently by the New Zealand Government had made the confusion in the island worse. The mission had promised the Mau many concessions and reforms, but there would be trouble when the natives realised that the gesture did not mean self-govern-ment. Nothing had been done to provide for the future of the 3500 halfcastes, whose hatred for New Zealand had been responsible for much of the trouble.