NIUE RULED BY MISSIONARIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18546, 21 August 1928, Page 10

NIUE RULED BY MISSIONARIES.

VISITOR TELLS OF MISREPRESENTATION OF ISLAND ADMINISTRATOR.

“Niue is ruled by the London Misionary Society. In fact they consider that they have more right to arrange the lives of the natives than the Administrator or the Government of New Zealand, which has had control of the island for the past fifty years.”

With these words, Professor Macmillan Brown, who returned to Christchurch to-day, after

a visit to Niue Island, gave his opinion of the workings of the London Missionary Society on the island. Professor Ma c - millan Brown said said that the island was converted to Christianity in the forties of the last * century by two natives who were taken aboard the missionary vessel John Williams, and who were taken to Samoa, where they were educated and sent back to their people. One of these natives ran off with another man’s wife, so he was discounted, but the other, Paullo, carried on the work of converting the natives and so prepared the -way for the London Missionary Society’s agent, the Rev W. E. G. Lawes, who went, after three or four years on Niue, to New Guinea. In fact, one of the earliest experiences that the speaker had with missionary life was in 1879, when he was journeying to the East. At Somerset, on the Cape York Peninsula, he met Mr Lawes. A brother, the Rev. F. E. Lawes, was on Niue until about 1905. “There is a tendency for the missionaries to misrepresent the Administrator, Captain Luckham,” said Professor Macmillan Brown. He said that while he was staying with the Administrator, the latter had shown him a document which the missionaries were forwarding to the New Zealand Government. The speaker had read it and had found it full of illogicalities. It was by no means full of common sense, but contained many complaints and twisted facts.

“It is a pity that the missionaries set themselves up against the Administrator,” the professor continued. “You know, I know a great many of the islands cf the Pacific and Niue is one of the best administered. The natives work in amity. They have been the unfortunate victims of influenza and I could hear the chest cough that it leaves all round the island.”

Captain Luckham had also been a victim to the influenza, he added, and was suffering from the chest cough as were the natives. Captain Luckham had been on the north-west frontier of India in the Indian Army, and on leaving that he commenced his training as an administrator on Aitutaki, later going to Niue.