A SAMOAN STORY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16992, 20 October 1915, Page 8

A SAMOAN STORY.

SIXTY NATIVES ARRESTED BY GERMANS.

PARTY EXILED TO LONELY ISLAND.

The strange experience of a party if about sixty natives of Samoa has 'teen disclosed by correspondenco between the Hon G. W.Russell, Minister if Internal Affairs, the Prime Minister if the Commonwealth, the Secretary of State for tho Colonics, the Japanese Government, and tho British Ambassador at Tokio.

The correspondence, which is very voluminous, covers a fairly long time, and deals with the united efforts of high officials to have the natives taken be.ck to their island homo from exile, to which they wore sent by the German authorities at Samoa before the w.-i broke out. It appears that a Samoan chief named Lauiki and members of his tribe, who lived in German Samoa, committed the crime of inquiring after what methods the taxation in German possessions in Samoa was administered. In addition, they committed the much graver crime of showing a spirit of friendliness towards tho British. Otherwise they were practically guiltless. but they were arrested, were placed on a German man-of-war. and were taken to Saipan Island, in the Marianen Group, north'of New Guinea, which belonged to Germany. They repeatedly expressed a wish to go back to their home, and the German Governor, apparently, promised that some of them would be taken back, but nothing was done until, on the outbreak of war. their position was made known to the British authorities. It was then discovered that there were in the, party thirty-four males and twenty-seven fences, all anxious to return. Tho island of Saipan is a lonely spot, seldom visited by trading vessels, and the British authorities immediately set aKout the repatriation of the natives. It wiis discovered that a trrxling vessel belonging to Messrs Burns, Philp and Co., of Australia, called at Jaluit, in the Marshall Archipelago. Through the efforts of the British Ambassador at Tokio, the Japanese Government sent a naval transport to Saipan, took the Samoans on board, and landed them at Jaluit, where they wero placed under tho care of the Japanese Government.

-ue correspondence doc® not show what the end of the affair is, but the arrangement is that a trading vessel will take the Samoans from Jaluit to Sydney, and from there they will be sent in tho Union Steam Ship Company's vessel Atua to the part of Samoa in which they have their homes, and which now, of course, is under British rule.