The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1927. TARDY WISDOM ON SAMOA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 131, 24 August 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1927. TARDY WISDOM ON SAMOA

THE merit of the Government’s decision to appoint forthwith a Royal Commission to investigate the causes oil trouble and disaffection in Western Samoa is depreciated by its delay. If the Administrator has had nothing to hide or hold back during the protracted agitation in the mandated territory, it was his plain duty to have urged the Prime Minister long ago to institute and press a searching inquiry. It cannot be denied that the unconscionable delay in making an independent effort to clear the murky political air of the Samoan trouble and compose the temper of disaffected natives, whose punishment in too many cases has been nearer the harsh character of militaristic law than the nature of British justice, has created widespread mischief and has done immeasurable harm to the good name of the Administration. Though it would be interesting to know, as the Leader oi the Opposition quickly noted in the House of Representativeslast evening, why the Government so suddenly has changed m attitude on the question the point need not be unduly stressed. It is probable that Sir George Richardson has discovered at last that even a king can do wrong, and now realises that the true British way of securing the contented loyalty of a native race is through an avoidance of the disciplinary methods of a dragoon. Singularly enough the reasons now given by the Administrator of Samoa for an impartial and independent inquiry into the causes and sources of all the trouble in the territory emphasise the necessity there was for an earlier investigation by a judical commission. Sir George Richardson bases his recommendation to the Prime Minister on what he describes as “unwarranted untruths and sensational statements in the press concerning Samoa.” These were allowed to grow beyond reasonable proportions before either he or the most responsible administrators in this country agreed to break down their own obduracy and their haughty and conceited assumption that their policy was above challenge. Instead of inquiring- openly and impartially into the causes of the Samoan turmoil they aggravated the clamour by imposing harsher restrictions upon the agitators and by inflicting humiliating punishment for political offences, which, in this country, are held to be the inalienable rights and privileges of British subjects. Any administration that cannot stand criticism is clearly in need of a corrective jolt. Now that the Government has come to wisdom at long last, it is to be hoped that the personnel of the projected Royal Commission on Samoan grievances will be confined to judicial experts. Politicians or any taint of political interest should be* completely excluded. And the scope of the inquiry should aover the whole ground of the disaffection in the islands, and not he limited to the grievances solely concerning the natives. As for the Parliamentary inquiry that is now going forward, the Government might well now mark it down as an extravagance.