The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1928. SAMOAN DEPORTATIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 19772, 24 January 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1928. SAMOAN DEPORTATIONS.

Thk Prime Minister, under pressure of public opinion, has made a statement on the Samoan deportations which he would have done well to make when they were first announced, just a month ago. It does not cover all the points on which information might be desired, but it throws a good deal ol light on the position. Mr Coates begins by saying that there seems to have been some misapprehension throughout the country as to the reasons underlying the Government’s extreme action. If that was the case the Government must take all the blame for it. The silence which it has maintained in regard to all that has been happening in Samoa since the Royal Commission’s report was made, including the reasons for its deportation orders, certainly was not well designed to prevent misapprehensions. “Never apologise, never explain,” was the motto of an autocratic First Sea Lord. That might answer well enough where personal actions were concerned, bnt it is no motto for the Government of a democracy, ft is doubtless necessary, for Samoa’s good, that that country should be despotically governed, using the word in its non-sinister aspect; but the people of New Zealand, who have the real responsibility lor the mandate, must know how the despotism is applied. One misapprehension there has not been. It was easy to believe that the Government, which does not court criticism for its own sake, was doing its best for Samoa in the latest extreme exercise of its authority. But a Government may have the best motives and still do the wrong thing. The case for the deportations which Mr Coates makes is that there is still a state of emergency in Samoa. A groat proportion of the natives are on strike. They refuse to obey regulations which provide for the suppression of pests, the good upkeep of their plantations, the keeping of their homes sanitary and their children healthy, or to pay taxes. They are damaging themselves and their own future prosperity in a fit of the sulks, and they are threatening to Injure our prosperity also, because when Samoa cannot pay its way it is New Zealand, ns the responsible guardian, that makes up the balance. Thanks to the medical service in the islands, population has been increasing, and the infant death rate lias been halved in three years. Now the medical services are being tabooed. It might be a case of saving the Samoans from themselves. It is rather a case, in the Government’s view, of saving them from evil counsellors, the promoters and, it would be implied, the moving spirits of that mutinous Man which, the Royal Commission has said, cannot exist together with the Administration’s authority.

Mr Coates, with perhaps one exception. docs not allege any definite acts of incitement of natives against the Government as having been committed bv Messrs Nelson, Smyth, and Gurr since the Commission’s report. He leases it to be concluded that their deportation was a natural direct sequel to the conditions which that revealed. But he makes it plain that those conditions have continued to this time, with the result that the administration of the territory has been “very largely ineffective.” And the inference is that it is their influence that is still working. The Man has set up a police force of its own, equipped with uniforms supplied by Mr Nelson’s firm. That is not conclusive evidence of their influence; there might be no other place where uniforms could be obtained; it does suggest that, in these later days, the Mau has not been discouraged by Mr Nelson and his friends. The question that arises is whether it might have been if they had been differently handled. Was the opportunity of reversing their influence, which was given to other European eiicouragcrs of the Mau, given to them before they were deported? One would have expected that some sort of ultimatum would at least be declared. Deportation, even without trial, may be a necessity in the control of tropic isles. There are precedents for it. Mr Gurr has not been made welcome in American Samoa. The power is one, however, that should not be applied if the end required is obtainable in any other way. The deportations are not a punishment, they are a preventive measure, Mr Coates insists. We imagine that they will appear as a good deal of a punishment to the individuals concerned. The distinction which the Prime Minister makes

was the justification put forward for not submitting them to a judicial procedure. A better justification might be that such procedure is not practicable in Samoa. But Mr Coates’s statement docs hot deal, except in the most ’general manner, with that aspect of the question.