PEACE IN SAMOA

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 October 1931, Page 10

PEACE IN SAMOA

ADMINISTRATOR’S REPORT [special to “stab.”] WELLINGTON, October 29. Native unrest in Western Samoa has steadily diminished during the past year, and interest in the movement has died out, according to the annual report of the Administrator tabled in the House, to-day.

The report states that as the unrest has died away, several of the known agitators’have left the country, with the result that the discordant element has become less conspicuous. “The position now is generally satisfactory.” The report records: “Increasing peace and harmony prevail. The active phase of the Mau appears to have ended, and there are few Samoans taking any interest in it. There is still a passive phase in which co-opera-tion with the Administration is not complete, but in almost every district the Samoans are now working together and uniting in all their formal normal relations among themselves and with the Administration officials, in all local affairs. The movement itself has changed in character, with a loss of strength, and is engaged, so far as it exists at all, in the collection of money for purposes of propaganda in Auckland. While the Mau has ceased for the time, it may be expected to revive a little for the benefit of the tourists as each dry season recurs, and its complete end. may be delayed if financial returns from visitors are sufficient."

Commenting further on native affairs, the Administrator utters a word of caution. The authority of the chiefs, he says, is crumbling, and they do not receive the same implicit obedience and respect as formerly. The effect of the Mau has been to hasten the decay of the social structure, by undermining the influence of the chiefs, through divisions in the family, and through the setting up of some vague outside authority as an excuse for disobedience to the Matai. “This process,” he remarks, “was probably inevitable, and in the advance of every similar community towards civilisation there occurs a period when the rule of the chiefs begins to decline and be replaced by outside forces. Such period of transition must always be one of difficulty and care is necessary on one hand to check a too rapid development, and to maintain a system of parental control, so long as it remains useful, and on the other hand to guide and direct rather than to antagonise the influences which may some day replace the patriarchal system.” ________