A.—4b.

The complaints made against the Administration (Bee Appendix II) may be conveniently divided into two main classes (1) A complaint relating to the total prohibition of the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquor ; and complaints more specially affecting the trading and business community. For convenience' sake, in this class have been placed charges of alleged extravagance of expenditure of the public revenues of the Territory. (2) Complaints and charges relating to acts of the Administration relating to Native affairs and Natives, and to the part directly or indirectly taken by Samoans in the government of the Territory. At the outset we wish to state that the widest scope to bring complaints before the Commission was allowed by us. The reason for the adoption of this course was the inability of the Samoans to understand any limitation of the scope of the inquiry, and the almost childish desire manifested by them to give evidence before us without regard to the circumstances that their testimony might, in the main, be a reiteration of evidence already given, and without reference to the importance or materiality of their statements. We are unaware of any complaint having been excluded from evidence which could by any reasonable possibility be worthy of investigation. We think that it is a significant circumstance that with reference to the acts of the present and previous Administrator, both on the European and Native sides of their administrations, no act of malfeasance, misfeasance, or misconduct on their part, or on the part of their European officials, was charged by the complainants. Ab one time it was suggested that charges of this nature might possibly be made against the present Administration, but absolutely no evidence of such charges was tendered before us. Furthermore, except in respect of so-called orders of banishment, of orders for the deprivation of titles, and of orders requiring Natives to return from Apia to their homes made late in the year 1926, or in the year 1927 in connection with the operations of the Mau organization —which will be later dealt with —no allegation was made that the Administrator or any of his Head Office officials had acted in a high-handed or arbitrary manner. The absence of such allegations speaks highly for the spirit in which the administration has in the past been conducted. PART I. We propose now to deal with the charges and complaints comprised in the first class of the division we have for convenience sake made. They relate— (1) To the total prohibition of the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquor ; (2) Complaints relating to the action taken by the Administration with regard to the sale on consignment as agent for the producers of part of the copra produced by Samoans, known as " Native copra " ; (3) Charges of extravagance in the expenditure of the public revenues of the Territory. As to (1) the Total Prohibition of the Manufacture, Importation, and Sale of Intoxicating Liquor. The case made by the complainants under this head may be thus succinctly stated : It was said that the requirement of the mandate that the supply of intoxicating spirits and beverages to Natives should be prohibited could be effectively enforced by prohibiting the supply to Natives, but permitting the sale to " Europeans " under some system to be devised. It was further contended that the consumption by Natives of a home-made beer, known as fa'amafu, containing a content of proof-spirit in excess of 3 per cent, had increased since the coming into force of total prohibition on the Ist May, 1920. A suggestion was also made that there had been sales to Natives of spirit distilled from divers fruits and vegetable products. The prohibition of the manufacture and sale of

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