SHOULD SAMOA GO BACK TO GERMANY?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21183, 2 November 1938, Page 6

SHOULD SAMOA GO BACK TO GERMANY?

Although no mention has yet been made of the return of Samoa to Germany in a general liquidation of the Colonial issue in relation to the claims of Berlin, it is not unlikely that the lure of an outpost in the Pacific may yet appeal to the Nazi leaders as a counter, in support of Japan, to Britain’s strength at Singapore. It can be said without hesitation that Germany’s characteristic way of demonstrating her desire for peaceful relations with other peoples will suggest to the Imperial Government as well as the people of New Zealand, that the experiment in self-government in Samoa should be tried out and that no totalitarian blight should be permitted to settle anywhere in the Southern Pacific. The native people of the mandated territory of Samoa now reposing under the beneficient protection and friendly guidance of New Zealand have no wish to see the return of the Germ fins “Samoa for the Samoans,” is their slogan, and it ought not to be necessary to remind the leaders of the Third Reich that if the Nazis in Germany have a right to live their own way according to their own tastes and inclinations, the same rights can hardly be denied the Samoans. The Nazis, on their part, are very fond of parading their love for their fellow men, which if the most powerfully accredited reports from Germany can be accepted, takes the form of callous purges and ruthless deportation of unhappy people whose only sin is that they are racially different from the Germans. Moreover, the Samoan people must never be consigned to the tender mercies of totalitarian terrorism. In countries that are being ruthlessly governed by dictators, individual men and women are constantly being slaughtered iu the “interests of the nation.” Human brotherhood under the totalitarian ideal of government is being established by the “liquidation” (mass-murder) of Kuluks iu Russia, of Jews and Communists in Germany, of Abyssinians in Abyssinia, and of Spaniards in Spain, The political philosophy that suggests that the best way to serve humanity is by the ruthless persecution of human beings who do not share the views of the ruling regime should be given no place in lands that are beginning to catch a glimpse of the freedom that can be enjoyed by the individual under a democratic regime. The issue in Samoa is then plain. As one notable observer -of world affairs has said: “tyranny or civilisation—you cannot have both, and there is no third alternative.”