NATIVE WELFARE

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 February 1947, Page 8

NATIVE WELFARE

POLITICAL EDUCATION IN PACIFIC SLOW DEVELOPMENT CANBERRA, Feb. 5. “Self-government for the peoples of the south Pacific calls for knowledge, experience, and self-discipline, which can be acquired only by-slow, political education,” said the British Pay* liamentary Under-Secretary for. the Colonies (Mr. Ivor Thomas) in a broadcast-address to the people of England on the conference to set up a South Pacific Commission on native welfare. He said that although the nations administering the south Pacific territories had. made no distinction of colour, race, or creed in the goal they had accepted for these territories, self-government could not be handed to primitive peoples on a plate. “We might as well hand a savage a violin and tell him to play a sonata, said Mr. Thomas. “The rate at which native development will come about cannot be predicted, for it will depend to a large extent on the efforts of the peoples themselves. “The administering nations have set before themselves the ideal of trusteeship, and already in many areas this ideal is.,passing into a partnership. A symbol of this fact is that the delegates have recommended, that the headquarters of the proposed commission should be in one of the South Sea islands. We want , the islanders to feel.that, it is something of their own, not something imposed on them from outside?”' '■' . "f .