STEVENSON AND SAMOA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

STEVENSON AND SAMOA

REAL FRIEND OF THE NATIVE.

BY MATANOA-

Only incorrigible humbugs could dare to cite Robert Louis Stevenson in support of the miserable cause against Sir George Richardson and his administration in Samoa. They, are guilty of a shocking profanation of Stevenson's memory as well as of vile falsehood. 'Readers of his " Footnote to History" and of his letters have no doubt about his utter detestation of the motives and methods of the rapacious traders who, from time to time through many years, have resented surveillance of their traffic with the natives. But these " Artful Dodgers," banking on the fact that such readers are only a minority of the public, deliberately take one or two facts out of their setting and serve them up as proof that. R.L.S., in his intervention in what he called Samoan " politics," was of their own type, and, if now alive, would be on their side. No more atrocious crime against the dead was ever committed. Their case is so bad that they aro left naked to their enemies; but their desperate plight would not have betrayed them into trying to rob Stevenson of his winding-sheet unless they had been deficient in more than argument. He took a stand against certain administrators of the group, officials appointed under the Berlin Convention. He was successful in having two of them, a Swedish gentleman of sorts, named Cedarkrantz, and a precious baron, entitled Senfft von Pilsach, sent soon about their business; and for his pains was under risk of deportation. Excellent ammunition fox our guns," says the traducers of the present Administrator; and they pick it up, and duly fire it. But look at what they cunningly left I They discreetly refrain from telling why Stevenson was in this brief jeopartiy and for whom he took the risk. They would leave the impression that, in the interests of the natives, he fought, with the traders against the Administration, What rubbish! He fought the Administration because it was backing the conscienceless traders in their exploitation of the natives. Against the Exploiting Traders. Among the traders he had one respected friend, the American, H. J. Moors. For the rest he had damnations always handy, especially the Swedish and German rascals. He saw that the Administration was set on serving chiefly the commercial interests of the " long-handled " German company earlier established i« the Pacific and reconstructed under the title " Deutsche Handelsund Plantagen Gesellschaft der Sud-see Inseln zu Hamburg." This title, which beats "that blessed word Mesopotamia" into a cocked hat, Stevenson derided as " a piece of literature." It is; its full understanding will give the careful reader, even if unable to decipher it without the aid of a German dictionary, a clear insight into Pacific history. This company pulled the administrative strings. It was able—and very willing—to influence German official policy, which was, as one of Stevenson's biographers plainly says; " to inflame native feeling in its own interest." Stevenson himself bluntly says that "the head of the boil of which Samoa languishes is the German firm." The traders of Apia didn't love him. When trouble arose, they tried to have him blamed for it. They knew that, if he had his way of saving " these poor children," as he called the Samoans, from their cruel greed, tliey would be sent packing. He was all for their deportation. " The trouble," he wrote in the famous " Footnote," of which he had himself a mixed opinion, " is that they are all here after a livelihood." Their commerce, he says, " shows its ugly side." Of the effect on the Samoans he is in no doubt: "Close at their elbows, in all this contention, stands the native looking on. Like a child, his true analogue, he observes, apprehends, misapprehends, and is usually silent. . . He sees these men rolling in a luxury beyond the ambition of native kings; he liear3 them accused by each other of the meanest trickery; ho knows some of them to bo guilty; and what is he to think ? He is strongly conscious of his own jxjsition as the common milk cow." Distrust of the Beach. It is significant that, under the troubled order he knew, Stevenson did not look to the trader foi any help to find a way out. He distrusted the beach at Apia with too much reason to do that. Instead, he writes to Sidney Colvin — "Yesterday. Sunday, the Rev. Dr. Browne" —he is referring to . Dr. George Brown, long well-known in New Zealand— secretary to the Wesleyan Mission, and the man who made the war in the Western Islands and was tried for his life in Fiji, c J- me , up ? and we had a long, important talk about Samoa. O. if I could \only talk to the home men! But what would it matter? none of ihem know, none of them care if we could only have Macgregor —Sir William Macgregor, one of the most wisely firm and successful of British administrators in the Pacific—" here with his schooner, you would hear of no more troubles in Samoa. That is what we want; a.man that knows and likes the natives, Q UI paye _de sa personne, and is not afraid of hans?inp when necessary. We don t want bland Swedish humbugs,- and fussy, footering (rerman barons. That the maeAstrom lies, and wo shall soon be in it.

What he would have done with the commercial brigands, and their fellow conspirators among the administrative officials, is too certain to leave room for discussion. They would have been turned cut, neck and crop, never to set foot in Samoa again. Changed Circumstances. If the position to-day is to be related clearly to that of the time when Stevenson wrote, care must be taken to see the leading actors aright, in view of the changed circumstances. To neglect to do this is flagrantly dishonest. The Samoans romain in need of protection from avaricious traders. Avaricious traders are still there. But no longer is there an officialdom working hand-in-glove with the traders for the commercial exploitation of the natives. It was this state of affairs that aroused Stevenson's ire. The old bad order has given place to something vastly different. Now there is an administration that would have had Sir William Macgregor's cordial approval, just the kind that is prepared to suffer many things in its defence of the natives' real good, and this is the kind that would have had Stevenson's ardent support. It is fitting to a degree that his old home at Vaihma is occupied by an Administrator so much to Stevenson's mind. The humbugs of to-day may affect to place themselves alongside him, because of the brief unauthorised intervention he essayed; but they will deceive no one well informed. " His purposes," as Colvin commented on this intervention, " were at all times those of a peacemaker." Theirs have been just as clearly those of strife-makers, none the less so because they have prated about their immaculate motives. Their sorry deeds spfeak so loudly that we cannot heed what they fay.