RIGHT TO SHOOT

Taranaki Daily News, 25 May 1934, Page 9

RIGHT TO SHOOT

NATIVES IN NEW GUINEA PLEA OF VICTIM’S SISTER. DEATH OF CAPTAIN McGRATH. Melbourne, May 8. A plea that regulations governing the attitude of white inhabitants to natives in New Guinea be revised so that prospectors and others would be permitted to shoot to kill during murderous native attacks without fear of Court punishment if they did so where the occasion warranted drastic action has been made by Mrs. O. Levy, of East Melbourne. Mrs. Levy’s brother, Captain Bernard L. McGrath, was murdered by hostile natives during an attack on the Morobe goldfields in New Guinea on February, and the official report of the affair, which lasted more than two days, was released this week by the Prime Minister’s Department. Mrs. Levy said that it was well known at what risk of condemnation by the Administration a white man might shoot a native. The official report of the fracas which she had received from the Prime Minister’s Department clearly indicated, said Mrs. Levy, that her brother, knowing what would happen if he managed to escape from the attack, kept firing over the heads of the natives, even when they were closing in on him at the end.

“Mr. Robert Chester shot a native in New Guinea a few months ago in ? what he said was self-defence, but. he was convicted at Ramu. This fact, and the loss of prestige to the white man among the natives, created danger. They began stealing my brother’s stores soon afterward. He mentioned in a letter a pig stolen from the cookhouse. He tried conciliation to the end. He had 15 years’ experience among them, and few men knew the tribes, trails and villages as he did.

“From my brother’s letters it is obvious that the whole district was thoroughly out of control—the fact that the natives attacked the police after the murder proves that. “Arriving at his camp at mid-day, two neighbouring prospectors, the brothers Messrs. Dan and Michael Leahy, found his body riddled with arrows and hostile natives swarming in on all sides. They had reached my brother just two minutes too late. “While Michael defended the body from the yelling, screaming natives, Dan, with five native boys, walked 30 miles through mountainous, hostile country for help from the Administration at Upper Ramu. The next day, in an exhausted conditon, he struggled back over the 30 miles with Cadet T. G. Aitchison. Immediately Dan and the police arrived backed at the camp, the hostile natives began an attack which they kept up night and day. “Dan Leahy’s walk was an epic feat through such country, and at great personal risk Michael Leahy remained at the camp throughout the night while help was being brought In his report, Machael only refers to the risk he took as a ‘sleepless night’”