THE ISLAND TRIP.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 2018, 3 August 1920, Page 6

THE ISLAND TRIP.

AND INDENTURED LABOUR. THAT MISSING "DEMAND." {From Our Own Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, August 2. Speaking in the House of Representatives on Samoan matters the other night, Labour members alleged that, when the Faipules of Samoa met the New Zealand Parliamentary party to present their "demands," the list which they presented was not the complete list agreed to by the conference which had drawn up the "demands," inasmuch as there was no reference to indentured labour, the discontinuance of which the natives had particularly requested. To-day The Sun's representative made some inquiries regarding this allegedly missing "demand." The result of those inquiries does not go to support the Labour members' suggestion that the reference to indentured labour had been surreptitiously removed. The Fono, or conference of the native parliamentarians with the Dominion party, took place on the day of the party's arrival at Apia. All morning the visitors had been engaged in making the rounds of the native schools, accompanied bv the Civil Administrator (Colonel R. W. Tail), who arrived in Samoa with the party. In the afternoon the Fono was held. There, according to a departmental explanation, two copies of the natives' "demands" ' were handed over to Sir James Allen ,as leader of the New Zealand party. These lists were typewritten, and both 'were signed by over 30 of the Faipules. They contained only the 27 requests included in the printed report of the trip, and made no reference to indentured labour. The demands were all numbered, so that i\ would hardly have been possible to have deleted one after the lists were signed. If anything originally decided upon was not included in the final document, it certainly appears that it must have been deleted with the full concurrence of all the signatories, for no word of complaint or dissatisfaction was voiced at the Fono.