The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 1930 THE DUNEDIN GETS HER ORDERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 1930 THE DUNEDIN GETS HER ORDERS

II7ITII a warship at its disposal and a crisis looming in Samoa, the New Zealand Government could not be expected to neglect its naval resources. H.M.S. Dunedin has accordingly been ordered to the Islands. She will in the meantime base at Suva, but will be ready to steam from there to Apia at a moment’s notice. Perhaps necessity will even decree that she does not go to Suva at all, but changes her course in response to wirelessed orders. Yet it is difficult to see how the arrival of the Dunedin in Apia can help matters just now, for it is less a display of force that is wanted than ar sign of some understanding and conciliatory spirit. Aboard the Dunedin this mission will not be appreciated. The New Zealand Squadron’s recollections of its last journey to Samoa are full of the trifling embarrassments attendant on any commission which withholds from it the right of firing a shot. The last Samoan episode in which the navy was concerned converted its men into policemen who could not even draw truncheons. The spirit of this situation was appreciated much more by the Samoans, who can see fun in a lot of things where it is not apparent to the European eye, than it was by the sailors thus condemned to an unusual part in obedience to the sacred mandates of duty. All that the Dunedin can do. is he a sort of bulwark to authority in the event of another clash. So far as the country knows at present she is not even empowered to assist in any campaign for the arrest of those concerned in the latest outbreak. She is not likely to be invited to train her guns on the Mau villages and plantations, because the economic position of Samoa, dragged down by this miserable and protracted deadlock which no Government seems to have the acumen to end, is precarious enough as it is. The finances of a wonderfully endowed group of islands that once sustained themselves in complete independence of external aid have had to he helped out with very heavy grants from the New Zealand Treasury, and while this political paralysis exists there is absolutely no guarantee or assurance that the Dominion will get its money hack. The New Zealand Government, however, is “sensible of the duty devolving upon it of ensuring adequate protection to the officials and police engaged in the administration of the law.” These are very plausible sentiments, hut the Prime Minister neglects to say how far they are to be carried. If it is contended, as logically it may be, that the white policeman killed on December 28 was killed in the execution of his just and reasonable duty, then someone among the mob that killed him is guilty of murder. What is the Government going to do about it? Will it sit back and watch the Mau natives disperse to their villages until another spasmodic official effort stirs them to activity, or will it have someone arrested and tried? Any other course brings the whole sincerity of its policy under suspicion; yet a punitive campaign just now could only have disastrous results, and is certaiidy not demanded by public feeling in New Zealand. This is partly because the existence of an obnoxious censorship which blue-pencils every wireless dispatch from Apia leaves the unpleasant impression that the whole truth about the episode of December 28 may not have been" told. Mr. A. Hall Skelton, of Auckland, has informed Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, that the Administrator has suppressed certain important aspects of the affair. Unfortunately the testimony of Mr. Hall Skelton is just as much ex parte as any that might be tendered by the Administrator. It is simply impossible under the present conditions to get an independent or unprejudiced account of things except by word of mouth or by mail. That alone, prevailing as it has in a British community for two years, shows how unsavoury and unsatisfactory is the present state of affairs in Samoa.

THE COLONIAL’S DESTINY

IT is observed frequently by visitors from overseas that New * Zealand preserves the characteristics and traditions of Great Britain more zealously than any other part of the colonial Empire. The fact that the term “Homeland,” implying as it dfles an affectionate allegiance to the head of a family group, finds its most popular use in this country denotes clearly the attitude of a people whose national identity is only beginning to emerge from the foundation of English, Scots and Irish stock. So far New Zealanders have taken pride in keeping to the ways and habits of their fathers, while profiting from the lessons that an older land has learned.

The other side of the picture is shown by the suggestion that New Zealanders suffer from the weakness of a flaccid imitation of things British. On the eve of his departure for England the Rev. James Burns, of London, whose forceful discussions, from his temporary pulpit in Dunedin, of subjects ranging from the appreciation of art to the psychological effect of colour in women’s clothing have roused considerable interest, has told a Wellington interviewer that New Zealanders had a pathetic interest in the Old Country. But, he said, the time was coming when they would have “to make their own contribution to the world, bearing their own individual stamp.” At present the country was too young to have much national consciousness, but every year there was a higher proportion of the population pure New Zealanders. The blind imitation of things in the old countries had resulted in Dunedin, for example, being more Scottish than present-day Scotland itself. No one will oppose the contention that New Zealand, eventually, must assume a national identity of her own. Her insularity and the gradual severing of direct ties have their inevitable effect. Yet there is no desirable reason why the processes of this change should cast out tried and proven traditions, replacing them with characteristics of possibly uncertain worth. Dunedin may have created the curious anomaly of becoming more Scottish than Scotland, but there is nothing to prove that Otago’s capital is the poorer because its people are working out their destiny on established lines. Moreover, there is no “blind imitation” or “pathetic interest” in the Dominion’s continued study of British character, unless the former term be synonymous with a faithful co-operation in Empire affairs and the latter with an unswerving loyalty that has become the admiration of the world. A people cannot be blind when in many avenues of civic progress they have led the way; nor is there pathos in the unique felicity with which they have adapted the sterling characteristic of an old land to the changed requirements of a new. Of a certainty New Zealand must discover a national consciousness, but the hope should be that it will remain enriched with the binding worth of British character and tradition, at least until something better can be found.