SAMOAN ENQUIRY

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 December 1927, Page 7

SAMOAN ENQUIRY

COMMISSION’S VERDICT “NOT GUILTY” ON ALL COUNTS (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, December 9. The report of the Samoan Commission was issued to-day. The Commission find that Prohibition in Samoa is statutory, and the Administration must respect and enforce it. The Commission state this legislation has proved effective as far as could reasonably be expected in preventing liquor consumption by Samoans. Under the question of the complaints concerning the action of the Administration in making advances against native copra, and consigning such copra to the London market, through- the agency of the New Zealand Reparation Estates Department, the Commission find that the traders were aware for some years past of complaints by the natives that they were not getting fair treatment, but the traders were content ■with the position. There also was no competition, the natives being helpless, having to accept what the traders chose to pay, that traders paid only one price, irrespective of the quality of the copra. The conditions under which the Samoans sold their copra to the traders were not just or reasonable. The Commission find that the financial results of the Administration’s scheme to induce the production of good copra by the natives, and to ensure their receiving a fair price, had been good. In regard to the complaints as to extravagance in the public expenditure, the finding of the Com-mission is wholly in favour of the Administration. The Commission find Messrs Gurr and Smith were guilty of inexcusable carelessness in their figures and statements on financial matters, but acquit them of wilful misstatement. Mr Nelson’s statements are characterised as “very reckless.” The Commission found nothing to justify the complaint that the Administration was overstaffed, overpaid, or otherwise extravagant. The Commission find that the medical administration has been most zealously conducted and most efficient. No possible cause for complaint is found in the auditory of the accounts of the Administration. The complains as to the conduct of native affairs and of the alleged die-, tatorship of the Administrator, the Commission finds, were unfounded. The Commission finds that the banishment orders were regularly made, after proper investigation. The. Commission makes severe strictures on the Hon. Mr Nelson’s part in the Samoan trouble, and refer to the “grotesque exaggeration” of some of the'reports which reached Mr Nelson in Wellington, Sydney and Auckland from Samoan sources. The Commission find that it would not be prudent or safe to wholly repeal the power to require a Samoan to remove to another place in the islands, and, further, that no demand exists for the repeal. The Commission finds no act of malfeasance or misconduct on the part of the Administration, past or present. On three small, non-committal points alone is there any finding that is not entirely in favour of the Administration.