SAMOA.

Evening Star, Issue 19794, 18 February 1928, Page 6

SAMOA.

Me 0. F. Nelson, in the latest statement he has made on Samoan developments, takes the wrong ground to help his own case. There is a case for him to argue that deportation, as it has been exercised in Samoa, is an unreasonable power, and he did nothing to merit deportation. But it is useless for him at this stage to attack the methods of the Commission. To accuse Sir Charles Skorrett of “muzzling the Man ” is an absurdity. It is true that the counsel for that organisation complained at the outset that they were under a disadvantage in presenting their case owing to the haste with which the proceedings were opened and the absence of Mr Nelson from Samoa till a week after the Commission had begun. But, as Sir Charles Skerrett pointed out, the main charges which were the subject of investigation had been prepared, on information declared by Mr Nelson to bo complete, many months before that, and Mr Nelson’s late appearance was by his own deliberate choice. There was point in the statement of the Chief Justice that the less native evidence was briefed the better it was likely to bo in tho interests of truth. And the evidence actually heard was voluminous. It was published this week, and a copy of it was received by us two days ago. The mere minutes of evidence, excluding the Commission’s report, appendices, and documents presented as exhibits, run to more than four hundred large, closely-printed pages. Members of Parliament who are keen enough will have something to study during the recess. It is a fair point which Mr Nelson makes as to the difference of circumstances in which the Administrator and witnesses of tho Mau gave their evidence. “The Administrator,’’ he complains, “ sat on a dais with the Commissioners to face the ordeal of crossexamination by counsel whom lie could deport if he wanted to.” That might have been a disadvantage for the complainants. It was a pity that the question of deportation had to bo raised at all before the proceedings commenced. Sir George Richardson made his greatest mistake, we think, in holding that threat over Mr Nelson’s head when his visit was made to New Zealand to press tho case of the malcontents upon parliamentarians. But in practice wo do not find that the cross-examination of the Administrator was in any way limited by the consideration of a danger to themselves which it is suggested might have been in the minds of his examiners. The cross-examination was courteous, but it was thorough to a degree. If the complainants had proved their case, which they did not, it was the Administrator who would have been deported. Mr Nelson also finds fault because the Administrator was not restricted to questions and answers. He put in a written statement, on which he was cross-examined. The petitioners had as much time to prepare written statements, and the reports of sub-com-mittees of the Mau. setting forth their grievances in detail, were before the Commission. In that respect there was no real difference in procedure. Tho only real question for Mr Nelson to raise is the one he. has not chosen to raise so far, though, no doubt, we shall hear more of it in tho months to come—whether he was rightly visited with deportation. So far as we have had time yet for its study, the evidence goes no further than tho report did for justification of tho action and policy of the Government in that connection. Mr Nelson was not on trial. It was not shown that he had committed any acts that would bring him into trouble in a country different from Samoa, with its' credulous, easily inflamed, emotional native population, hugely outnumbering white men, to be considered. It is not an offence normally to drop matches. But to persist in dropping matches in a reserve full of dry wood might be a practice, very difficult to prove by law, fraught with dangers quite unable to be toleratqd. Samoa is such a sanctuary. Mr Nelson and his companions were removed owing to the conviction of the Administrator and the Government that Samoa will be a better place without them. That remains to be seen. The Commission found that Mr Nelson and his associates were the mainspring of the Mau, and that the Mau was incompatible with mandate authority. The secretary of tho Mau had his office on Mr Nelson’s premises. It would not appear from a hurried reading of the evidence that the Commissioner was as conciliatory in dealing with the white leaders of tho Mau as he was in dealing with the natives. He did not go to them when they professed grievances. He expected them to come to him, which they did not do. There is another suggestion which a professor of chemistry and a past prolessor of English literature, who has made some study of ethnology, have put forward. It is that a first requirement from an administrator or from public servants of Samoa should be some acquaintance with the latter sciencej and some knowledge, to be gained only by a previous apprenticeship, of the customs, character, and language of the natives. There is a good deal in tho plea, but it would bo false to suppose, because Sir George Richardson was appointed to his high position after serving a very different kind of apprenticeship, that the Samoan Administration has been accustomed to work without any intimate knowledge of Samoans. The Native Department, it was explained by Sir George Richardson, is administered directly by a Secretary for Native Affairs. Up till May last the Secretary was the late Mr Griffin, who for nineteen years had served with the London Missionary Society in Samoa, and since

then he has been the Rev. Mr Lewis, who was a member of the Methodist Mission. The best advice as to native manners and habits of thought should not, therefore, have been.wanting.