SAMOA TO-DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23501, 16 May 1938, Page 2

SAMOA TO-DAY

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAU A REMARKABLE POLITICAL ORGANISATION IV It is just 30 years since the first German governor of Western Samoa, Dr Solf, wrote to a missionary to ask the meaning of a new word which he was hearing applied to a revolutionary movement in Savai’i. The word was “mau”; and the missionary explained that as far as he knew it meant “ opinion.” Actually, the word “ mau,” as applied to the political movement which has made it familiar to newspaper readers, is a double entendre meaning both “ opinion ” and “ firm.” Those members of the Fono of Faipule who opposed General Richardson in 1926 regarded themselves as a mau; and after the fono had been officially purged it was these men, continuing in association, who formed the Mau which to-day dominates the Samoan political scene.

The last half-century has seen political nationalism take divers forms—Sinn Fein, the Indian National Congress, the Kuomintang, Fascism, and National Socialism. By comparison with these the Mau is unimportant, since there are hardly enough Samoans to make one good casualty list in a modern war. But as an object of study for the psychologist or the political philosopher the Mau is as interesting as it is baffling. At one moment it is a nationalist organisation pure and simple, using the ideology that subject nationalists have used since the French Revolution and extracting concessions from the Government by methods which Mr Gandhi would understand and approve. But anyone who attends a Mau function will soon realise that the Mau’s resemblance to other nationalist organisations stops short at its ideology (or perhaps one should say the ideology of its leaders) and its political methods. There will be speeches, many and long, and they will be listened to, remembered,’ and discussed endlessly in the village councils at night. There will be flags, brass bands, slogans, and fervour. The same things will be said about the New Zealand Government in Samoa as are said about British rule by nationalistic Indians, Irishmen, Arabs, and Cape Dutch. But ‘the spectator at such a function will see things which belong, not to the era of nationalties, but to a phase of human organisation which is older than recorded history. The intricate and rigid formalities of the kava ceremony, the ceremonial presentations of food, the dances of painted and half-naked warriors, the vast piles of taros, yams, and whole-roasted pigs, the willingness to spend not hours but days in feasting, singing, and gossiping—all these things reveal the Mau as an amalgam of modern nationalism with a society essentially tribal. The difficulty of reconciling these two aspects of the Mau sometimes leads people to assume that on its political side, it is merely the instrument of certain Europeans or partEufopeans. In support of this contention i! is pointed out that the newspaper articles, letters, petitions, and manifestoes which issue so copiously from the Mau headquarters at Vaimoso are obviously not written by Samoans. That is true enough, but it does not prove that the Samoans have no political intelligence or national consciousness. Nor. does it prove, what so many people would like to believe, that the Mau would collapse if Mr O. F. Nelson would leave Samoa. The Mau will find its leaders, as all such movements find their leaders.

The Samoan people have political intelligence and a national consciousness. Though their civilisation is tribal, they have incorporated into it much that we associate with Western individualism. Thanks to the missions, they are in their own language highly literate. Thanks also to the democratic and erastian tendencies of the London Missionary Society, they have some acquaintance with the mechanism of representative government. And because the average Samoan is passionately fond of politics and intrigue, and has ample time for such pursuits, he knows far more about what is happening in the Government offices in Apia and in the Mau headquarters than the average’ New Zealander knows about what goes on in Parliament Buildings, newspapers and wireless notwithstanding. But although the Samoans are knowledgeable and intelligent in politics they are almost completely lacking in judgment, stability, or a sense of proportion. Their thinking, like so much mediaeval thinking, rises in fragile spirals of logic from halfunderstood premises. They know of the outside world; they talk in the fales at night of Hitler and the war in China; they have seen in Apia many of the externals of Western civilisation. But the outside world has not impinged on their inner consciousness; it is only as real to them as the films of cowboys and gangsters they applaud so vigorously in Apia’s kinema house. It is as though the reef that shelters the Samoan islands from the ocean swell shelters them also from reality.

If it is difficult to gauge the political intelligence of the Samoans, as expressed in a movement like the r,Tau, even more difficult is it to gauge the extent and depth of their national consciousness. “Samoa foi the Samoans,” the watchword of the Man. is a borrowing from other national movements, yet it expresses an intense and enduring sentiment. The Samoans are conscious of themselves as a people distinct from the Tongans or the Hawaiians, who are also Polynesians: they are conscious that nothing except an historical accident separates them from the native inhabitants of American Samoa. What is of greater practical importance, there is a definite and growing feeling- that the Samoans should be united and should govern themselves without European interference. But whereas in other countries, African and Asiatic as well as European, nationalism has gone hand in hand with democratic individualism and has therefore been a powerful solvent of old institutions, in Samoa nationalism tends rather to reinforce the traditional culture. Both the Indian National Congress and the Kuomintang have been instruments of social change; and if their leaders consciously reject much of European civilisation, they nevertheless believe that the salvation of their people lies in escaping from the tyranny of ancient custom. By comparison with other nationalist movements, the Mau is reactionary. “ Samoa for the Samoans ” is something tar more than a territorial aspiration. It implies the defence of “ fa’a Samoa,” the traditional Samoan ways of living and think-

ing. That is one reason, among several, why the Mau concerns itself so little with education or health services, why it has at times done its best to cripple both. Not one of the Samoan leaders of the Mau has any desire to upset the feudal hierarchy of Samoan society. Missionaries, officials and traders have assured me that since the re-emergence of the Mau “ fa’a Samoa ” has become a stronger force than it has been for many years. Nor is this due to the conscious revivalism which has put Irishmen to the inconvenience of learning Erse or driven a few Indians back to their spinning wheels. “ Fa’a Samoa,” as the officials of several nations have learnt to their cost, is an obstinate and indigestible reality.

But although the Mau stands for the defence of the basic social institutions of Samoa, and is to this extent conservative, it is striving to eliminate those dynastic jealousies and discords which, since the beginning of Samoan recorded history, have undermined all attempts to assert national independence against the Europeans. To what extent the effort will succeed it is impossible to tell., Supporters of the Mau point out that it has already held the allegiance of the great majority of the Samoan people for longer than any other organisation of which there is record. Moreover, it was noticeable that, at the celebrations at Vaimoso to welcome back the Mau delegation, the largest and most representative gathering since Mr Nelson’s return, everything was controlled by the Mau committee and Mau police. The order of the dances presented by the various villages, their duration, and other such details, were governed, not by complex rules of precedence and procedure, but by directions from the Mau. A few years ago such disregard for convention would almost certainly have ended in bloodshed

The enemies of the Mau, and not a few who are accurate and dispassionate observers of Samoan life, are emphatic that the Mau, no longer oppressed, and given so much that it has asked for, will inevitably disintegrate. A “ new Mau ’’ exists and is growing. Though it has not the 10,000 members claimed for it by interested Europeans, or even half that number, neither is it, as Mr Nelson has asserted, confined to two villages. It exists in at least three villages to the east of Apia, in Malie to the west, and—so missionaries have assured me—in parts of Savai’i. The whole of Samoan history is a warning against assuming too readily that it will come to nothing.

Good and bad are curiously mixed in the Mau. Its defence of “ fa’a Samoa ” is good in that it helps to integrate Samoan social life and bad in that it is almost entirely uncritical. The Mau is also, of benefit because it has strengthened national unity and developed a form of political organisation which is characteristically Samoan. Both these achievements should make easier the task of advancing the Samoans to political responsibility without destroying or weakening their own institutions in the process. But the methods are not always as admirable as. the achievements. The Mau is controlled by an unfettered oligarchy which, like all unfettered oligarchies, is selfish and at times worse than selfish Samoans set an inordinate value on titles and honours and more value on money than, in their professed contempt for commercial civilisation, they like to admit. The Man’s increasing control over the distribution of official positions open to Samoans, most of which carry small salaries, is thus one of its most important sources of power. Already it effectively controls elections to the Fono of Faipule and the Samoan positions on the Legislative Council; it forced Malietoa to resign from the Legislative because he disagreed with its policy; the last president of the Mau resigned from that position to become Supervisor of Native Police: and a significant passage in the latest official report on the territory mentions that the Mau “ participated ” in the appointment of “ pulenu’u ” (village representatives

of the Administration). An organisation which has so much to offer office-seekers can hardly fail to make headway in Samoa.