SAMOAN AFFAIRS

Hokitika Guardian, 4 December 1928, Page 7

SAMOAN AFFAIRS

(Exchange.; A New Zealander who has returned to this conni rv after spending three years in Samoa expresses the opinion that if the public and politicians in New Zealand would only leave Samoa alone for a while the whole situation there would compose itseli. Ihe advice convoys the impression that it is thoroughly sound. Newspapers from the Dominion circulate among the Samoans, and from the utterances ol a few persons, with whom writing or spooehmaking on the subject of the natives’ grievances has become almost u passion, very erroneous conclusions are liable to be formed in tbe islands. The Samoans are apt to get the idea that in the adoption of a recalcitrant attitude towards the Administration they have the support of a considerable body of public opinion in New Zealand. Tbe Loader of the Labour Party has been very assiduous in endeavouring to make political capital out of the Samoan situation, and his rtteranc s have been particularly calculated to have a mischievous effect in confirming in a section of the Samoan natives an attitude of passive resistance to authority. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that the Samoans who were influenced to a display of disaffection against the Administration -received encouragement from the political agitation in New Zealand, of which they would be carefully informed, concerning their alleged grievances. A body of malcontents such as apparently still exists in Samoa is stimulated to persist in obstruction to constituted authority by the idea that its doings are a matter of keen interest to the people of New Zealand, and that it has good friends in the Legislature of the Dominion. 'Phe people of New Zealand are nof interested in the doings of the Afati. other tlian to deplore them, nor have they any sympathy to waste on that organisation. The politicians in this country, who, for reasons of their own. .seek to pose as champions of the native" in Samoa against an oppression and an injustice of which there is no evidence, are certainly not the best friends of the Samoans. Tbe alleged grievances >f flic natives have been investigated justice lias been done and the hand of conciliation has been extended. The welfare of tbe Samoan people is the all-important consideration with the Government of Now Zealand and the l Administrator ol Samoa. 'I lie mailer of the allegations that were invest i,rated not only by tbe Koval Commit don which was set up in New Zealand but also by the Alandatois ■Commission •if the League of Nations should lc regarded as closed. Over-much discussion and foolish criticism of the methods of the Administration have tended only to encourage a false sense of their own importance among members of the disaffected Samoan organisation. The phycliologieal effect of publicity and advertisement has c,.riainlv been harmful. “Ret Samoa alone” is good advice, and politicians who have been going to the other extreme would really net in the interests of the Samoans themselves if they were to adopt it.