A SAMOAN STORY

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 9

A SAMOAN STORY

SIXTY NATIVES ARRESTED BY GERMANS. PARTY EXILED TO LONELY ISLAND. Tho strange experience or a party of about 60 natives of Samoa has been disclosed by correspondence . between tho Hon. G. W. Russell (Minister of Internal Affairs), the Prime Minister of the commonwealth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Japanese Government, and the British Ambassador at Tokio (says tho Lyttelton Times). 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 back to their island homo from exile, to which they were sent by the German authorities at Samoa before the war broke out. It appears that a iSamoan chief named Lauiki and members of his tribe, who lived in Gorman 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 friendincss towards the British. Otherwise they were practically guiltless; but they were arrested, were placed on board, 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 Gorman Governor, apparently, promised that some of them would be taken back; but nothing was done until, ou the outbreak of war ; their position was made known to the British authorities. It was then discovered that there were in the party 34 males and 27 females, all anxious to return. The island of Saipan is a lonely spot, seldom visited by trading vessels and tho British authorities immediately set about tho repatriation of the natives. It was discovered that a trading vessel belonging tc> Messrs Burns, Philp, arid Co., of Australia, called at Jaluit, in tho Marshall_ Archipelago. Through tho efforts of the British Ambassador at Tokio, the Japanese Government sent a naval transport to Saipan, took the Samoans on boa.J, and landed them at Jaluit, where they were placed under the care of the Japanese Government. The correspondence does not show what the end of the affair is, but the arrangement i*s that a trading vessel will take tho 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 homos, and which now, of course, is under British rule.