WHAT SAVAGES THINK OF US

Evening Star, Issue 19840, 13 April 1928, Page 1

WHAT SAVAGES THINK OF US

Tliß while man is j«sl as peculiar to Sava ,t cs as sav-iges arc to tho white man. A'’nuked South Seas cannibal once told me lie could n- t understand why whites dressed in the davtimo and undressed at ni'dit (savs Jack .McLaren, in the ‘Gaily Mail’). “ . , -• in the night, when it is cold, we people put our clothes on,” ho said in eficct, •• and in the daytime, when it is hot, we take them oil.”

It sounded very logical. In a remote Solomon Islands village close to where the recent murder of two white men look place, a man asked me was it true, as ho had hoard, that in white men’s countries the people quarrelled aml .stole so much that strong men called policemen continually walked the streets to keep the peace. In his own village, ho said, there was little quarrelling—except with oilier vdhmes or with intruders —and hardly any stealing at all He said he had I nought that white men would have known belter than to behave like that. Another savage thought it strange that whites rejoiced and made holiday only at specified times —such as Christmas and taster. His people, he said, jubilated just whenever they fell like it, wliinli, incidentally, was very often indeed. Ho thought that our capacity for enjoyment must bo exticmely limited, in that we had to haic special' times and arrangements for it. in New Guinea a native told mo that the. meanest person he had ever heard of was a, white man ho had been told about during a. brief visit to a mission statiop. This man, it appeared, discovered that a mighty flood was coming, whereupon ho built a large boat with a house on it, placed on board all his pigs, fowls, and dogs, and with his family sailed away and left the rest of Hie people to drown. The name of this mean person was Moses, ho thought, and the boat was called MosesArk. Perhaps 1 had heard of it. In some of the Smith Seas settlements there are cinemas, but the films shown are usually very old and scratched: therefore the natives have a firm belief that in white men’s countries it is always raining I