SAMOAN AFFAIRS

Otago Witness, Issue 3571, 22 August 1922, Page 27

SAMOAN AFFAIRS

A SATISFACTORY POSITION. AUCKLAND, August 17. “A marked improvement in affairs in Samoa, both commercially and politically, has taken place in the last 12 months,” said the Under-secretary of External Affairs (Mr J. I). (Iray), in an interview, otter a five weeks' official visit to the mandated territory. From a commercial standpoint, Mr Gray expressed himself as quite satisfied that Samoa had come through the worst of a bad time, and at present was in a better position than either Fiji or Tonga. One of the main contributing causes was the fact that throughout the last 18 months of acute depression the Samoan Administration, with the approval of the New Zealand Government, had kept the Crown estates going, and had also carried out its previously arranged policy of public works. Another satisfactory feature was that the Samoan native population was showing a gratifying rate of increase, and recovering some of the terrible losses incurred during the influenza epidemic. The political situation had also changed completely. A year ago the Taipules, or Samoan Advisory Council, had presented a petition to the Minister of External Affairs asking that the administration be transferred to Britain. 111 its latest session, in April and June this year, the same native parliament had on at least two occasions passed sincere and formal motions expressive of confidence in the administration and loyalty to New Zealand. Replying to criticism which recently appeared in a Sydney paper, and was cabled to New Zealand, that the administration could not secure as good results from the appropriated estates as the former German owners, Air Gray said that these areas were now producing a very high-grade of copra and cocoa, which easily held its own on the London market. On the Mulafanua plantation, which was the largest cocoa-nut. plantation in the Pacific, and comprised 4000 acres of bearing [tree®, the output in the past year had been at least 3GO tons greater than in any pre-war year since 1901, and this crop had been produced with 50 fewer labourers than were employed by the Germans. Very much the same could be said of other plantations. Opinion had also been expressed by a leading planter and resident of Samoa in a recent interview to the Sydney press that the cocoa industry was doomed to extinction within the next, few years owing to the ravages of canker. From searching inquiries during his visit, Mr Gray stated that his opinion was completely at variance with that of experts. In Samoa the amount of canker that existed was quite negible, and confined exclusively to very old trees.