SAMOA.

Evening Star, Issue 20633, 5 November 1930, Page 8

SAMOA.

To use a phrase of “R.L.5.,” with whom ho collaborated in three novels, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, the American writer, is obviously “ splairging, running at largo like a wild nowt,” in the extreme indictment he has made of New Zealand rule in Samoa. We do not know how long it may bo since Mr Osbourne was last in Samoa, but tho presumption is that he has been reading Mr Holland’s pamphlets or other propaganda from tho sunny isles, which has not lacked incentives more selfishly interested since certain disturbers of their peace wore deported three years ago. Oppressive militarism, “grinding interference with the lives of both tho natives and whites,” is his complaint against the administration of our mandate. There may have been too much of tho trappings of militarism till a few years ago, but its spirit was littlo in evidence in tho general control of either Sir George Richardson’s or Mr Allen’s government. Tho “grinding interference” with tho lives of natives was no more than an effort in tho former’s time to make them happy and enlightened and to improve them, after a European fashion, at a much faster rate than they were prepared for. They were happy enough when they were left undisturbed. Tho “Prussians” did not como from Auckland alono; nothing was dono in Samoa which was not endorsed by tho New Zealand Parliament, and tho sole complaint of tho Loagno of Nations Mandates Commission against General. Richardson’s administration, when its acts were culled in question, was that it was not Prussian enough. Mr Osbourne’s animadversions aro made as an introduction to a new book by Mr A. N. Rowe, and Mr Rowe would abolish tho Mandates Commission as being “ incompetent.” Perhaps ho would also abolish the League of Nations, though, to urge that, he would have to join issue with Mr Holland as well as with tho administrators of Samoa. Mr Rowe held a post once as a district inspector in Samoa; freed from official restraints, ho wrote an article, less extreme than Mr Lloyd Osbourne’s tirade, against its government for a journal called ‘Foreign Affairs’; and beyond that Iw seems to have failed of fame. There have been mistakes in Samoa, as in every other mandate country and countries not under man-

date rule. Bub the deportations and tho local banishments of chiefs, which might alone be made to appear as acts of tyranny, are events long past. There is tho minimum of interference, wo take it, to-day with anyone’s desires or predilections. It was not the fault of New Zealand that it did not know the Samoans at the time when it first assumed responsibility for their wellbeing. We shall know how to govern them, pushing improvements at the precise pace at which they can be assimilated, when a race of officials has been bred with experience to fit them for the task. It is less than a tragic alternative that, before that day comes, the Samoans will probably be taking as much part in their own government as their kinsfolk the Maoris, with whom earlier mistakes were made, have long done in New Zealand.