The Dominion MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1928. WARSHIPS FOR SAMOA

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 121, 20 February 1928, Page 8

The Dominion MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1928. WARSHIPS FOR SAMOA

The Government is to be commended for the promptness with which it has acted in respect to the latest news from Samoa. Reading between the lines of the Prime Minister’s announcement, it would appear that a situation has developed highly prejudicial to the prestige of authority in the mandated territory. When the point is reached where the official police find it necessary to refrain from asserting their authority in case any action might provoke a native reprisal beyond the capacity of the limited forces available to cope with, it becomes evident that adequate reinforcements are imperative and urgent. The Government’s decision to dispatch the cruisers Diomede and Dunedin immediately for Samoa, therefore, appears to have been a wise and nceessary step. In the present circumstances, those people who have conceived it to be their business to criticise and belittle the Government for its policy in Samoa ought to take thought-of their responsibility. The report of the Royal Commission ought to have determined the situation, and created a basis for a better understanding between the Samoan Administration and the natives. The facts of the agitation were carefully sifted by an impartial Commission of the highest standing, and the Administration was fully vindicated in its policy and actions. Those who had brought charges were unable to sustain them. But the agitation has continued, and now comes this latest, and serious-looking development.

A regrettable feature of the whole situation has been the fact that the Labour-Socialist Party in this country has persistently striven to make it a political question with which to embarrass the Government. While such criticisms as Mr. Flolland has made publicly have no doubt been assessed at their true value by people in New Zealand, and carry little weight as against the Commission’s report, it is quite possible, that they may have had a harmful effect upon the native mind in Samoa, as indicative—to the Samoans—of serious divisions of opinion in New Zealand. The Samoans have no means of estimating the true value or lack of value) in the antiadministration sentiment in the Dominion.

. It would cause no surprise to learn that all this Labour-Socialist Party’s bickering at the Government over the Samoan trouble has been an actual encouragement to the disaffected natives to flout tb,e decision of the Royal Commission and the authority of the Administration. What the Labour-Socialist Party leaders have yet to learn is that in matters of Imperial import, wherein this country has undertaken to follow a line suggested by more experienced minds in native administration—as in the Mandated Territory—their party should rise above mere party considerations, and co-operate with other sections for the good of the whole. They are far too readv to decry their own country’s actions, and seek to place its administration in an unfavourable light in the eyes of the outside world. It is hoped that later news will show an assuring modification of the position, and that the steps taken will avert serious trouble. In the meantime, it would he well if the critics of the Administration in this Dominion would endeavour to realise their responsibility in this matter, and if they cannot assist, at least keep silent until the situation has been satisfactorily resolved.