The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1942. WHISKY-SWILLING PLANTERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 17, 21 January 1942, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1942. WHISKY-SWILLING PLANTERS

QN’E London newspaper, in attempting to discuss the situation in Malaya, finds it necessary to refer to “whisky-swilling planters” as being responsible with Government officials for the policy which lias been adopted of not arming the Malay population. Besides being in bad taste (the comment not the whisky) the language is false to the facts. Whisky-swillers soon cease to remain planters. Unfortunately, the London and English populations are apt to draw their mental pictures of life in the tropics from the short stories of Somerset Maughan and Beatrice Grimshaw. Neither of these writers give a fair picture of the white man’s life in the tropics. Somerset Maughan went to Malaya some years ago, ai - sorbed the-stories and scandals which occurred there over a series’ of many years and used them as plots for his stories. They were the exceptional happenings, not the regular life of the place. Beatrice Grimshaw just fills her market as she finds it, and bears it as best she can. It is unfortunately true that magazine editors are so bound by the “ traditional story ” of island life that they cannot be induced to look at those which come nearer to actual truth. The content of the island story is standardised. Here it is: Blue water, a beautiful lady in a pithing costume who spends most of her time swimming, preferably under water, among her rock garden on the coral reef; seductive native belles must he introduced somewhere in the picture and there is always a deep unsolved mystery conneetul with native magic or witchcraft. The beautiful lady aforesaid, when she is not swimming in limpid pools, is the wile of a husband whose mental and physical make-up are as interesting as the back of a barn door. The two are obviously ineompatibles, and he treats her shockingly. So much so that the young man from the public school with eyes shining with good form and a large stock of worldly wisdom, quite against his WiJ. but impelled by his highly developed sense of chivalry, takes a hand in the game, and very soon the plot thickens. The end comes by a timely snake-bite or alligator removing the unseemly husband, or failing that a coeoanut falling from its high estate puts an end to the modern buccaneer’s career and the beautiful lady presumably gives up her interest in under-water rock gardens and march - the first decent man she has ever met in Mt life, and they live in a state of holy acrimony ever afterwards. Any reader of the “ Chronicle ” is at liberty to use the foregoing stock story. It will probably find a magazine editor willing to buy it and publish it in the belief that it is a typical tropical story of “ island life.” The public believing that it is a true picture. however, must be played up to by the gutter Press of London, which must have its big circulations or sack its editors. The editor, desiring to keep his circulation ami his job. dishes up comment concerning whisky-swilling planters. In tile first place a planter leads a strenuous business life. ll’ lias an estate to attend to and a good deal of correspondence and book-keeping to engage his office time. He associates with other men who are equally busy and who. will: their wives ami families, are looking forward to “ next leave,” when they will travel abroad in search of renewed health. al! of which, in turn, costs money. .11. they spend their money whisky-swilling their next leave is going to be a thin one, hence they save against their leave ami curtail on whisky consumption. Further, it is rarely that a man can stand up to a tropical career for more than 2.) years at most, while the effects of fever may reduce the term considerably; so the average prudent man makes financial provision against such an eventuality. The monotony of life in tiie tropics and the effect of the strong am! incessant sunshine does create a degree of nervousness which finds relief in entertainment of various kinds, in which hospitality looms large. But many people who are consistently resident in tiie tropics are total abstainers, while those who do drink alcoholic liquor - a dhcrc to the i laid it ion of “ no drink until a i 11 t sumlow n. It may be said witli a good deal of truth, that it is in tiie tropics that knowing how to drink is most widespread. The whisky-swiller soon finds himself on the beach ami an outcast from a society which knows how to pick and choose. He is never called into tiie inm i councils of a (Town colony.