MORTALITY AMONG NATIVES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 173, 16 April 1919, Page 7

MORTALITY AMONG NATIVES

WHY THE PACIFIC ISLANDERS ARE DYING OUT. The natives of the Pacific recently staled the "Times" Sydney correspondent, are rapiUiy uying Out, and a Government official in the Gilbert Islands attributes the decay to tho introduction of European clothing, which undermines the native's constitution. He declares that the missionaries are doing wonderful work, but that they are making a grievous mistake in insisting on the wearing of clothes in these remote islands.

A different complexion was put upon the matter by Mr. Basil Matthews, editorial secretary of tho London Missionary Society, who was interviewed by a representative o£ the London "Observer." "The main cause of the reduction of the population in the South Sea Islands," said Mr. Matthews, "is the sterility amongst the women, caused by venereal disease introduced from Europe and America by the lower typo of traders and sailors. I am afraid that in the South Seas civilisation means syphilisation. It is true that in the earlier part of tho nineteenth century the missionaries encouraged tho natives to adopt European dress, as being essential to morality, but gradually, as their experience developed.and their views broadened, they saw how mistaken this policy was' from both the moral and physical points of view. The policy has, therefore, been reversed gradually during tho past quarter of a century, until to-day the missionaries are unanimous in their eitfouragement of the natives living on healthy, natural lines dictated by tho climate. It is the traders who are encouraging them to dress, and, by a curious paradox, the missionaries are now combating the attempts of the traders, who carry British and American goods, to press their wares on the natives. Thero is not an island in the South Seas to-day at which trading vessels do not stop to sell goods and to take on board cargoes of copra and other products of tho coconut."

Mr. Mathews mentioned that the heavy death-roll of the South Sea Islands from the abovo causes had been added to enormously by the influenza. Letters just received showed that the mortality had been terrible, and on one group of islands, out of a population of 30,000, no fewer than 6000 natives were found dead, .and they were being cremated in large numbers at a time.