MAU UNREST.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 99, 24 March 1930, Page 6

MAU UNREST.

ARBITRARY ACTION PREVAILS. GOOD HEADWAY MADE. (Special to “Standard.”) FEILDING, March 24. “Samoa is a country in which it would be well to hasten slowly for the Samoans are very tenacious in regard to their long established customs, and, even if those customs do not harmonise with us, at the same time they must be taken into consideration,” stated Hon. J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Defence, who has just returned from Samoa, where he has been engaged in settling the trouble with . the Mau, to a “Standard” reporter on Saturday afternoon. “It will be some considerable time before all the minor difficulties with the Mau are settled,” Mr Cobbe went on, ‘‘but our conferences made much headway, and in the end, although I made searching inquiries, I could not get any real grievance out of them, and 1 am now convinced that the future of the country will depend on the amount of firmness, patience and tact displayed by those in authority.” Asked how he had found the natives on his arrival in Samoa, the Minister said he was informed when he got there that it would be practically impossible to get the Mau leaders in for a conference. The Navy had been working at it for some weeks and had only, secured one man, but Mr Cobbe had different ideas of procedure. Interviewing the missionaries, who had retained the confidence of the natives throughout the trouble, Mr Cobbe got them to work among the Mau in a purely neutral manner with the result that in a week nil the leaders came in voluntarily and gave themselves up. Several conferences lasting over a week were held with the leaders and the Minister expressed himself as pleased with the results. Any further comment on the Mau situation threatening to verge on the field political, Mr Cobbe gave his impressions of Samoa from an economic aspect as reported elsewhere in this issue.