NEW HEBRIDES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 240, 16 February 1911, Page 2

NEW HEBRIDES

A FIRST-lIAX'D COMPLAINT. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Cliristchurch, Tuesday. At the meeting of the Christchurcll Presbytery to-day the Rev. C. Murray (clerk) read a letter from the Rev. Thomson MacMilkn, clerk of the New Hebrides Mission Synod, acknowledging with deep appreciation the motion of sympathy and confidence passed by the Presbytery in connection with the difficulties experienced by the missionaries in the New Hebrides owing to the hostility of the French officials. The letter stated that the British resident at Vila appeared to be powerless to check abuse* committed by French citizens, either because of incapacity, indolence, or because of want of support from the Home authorities. The result was that certain Frenchmen did and said whatever they pleased, and there seemed to be no redress. Thus missionaries felt that unless the matter was taken up things would only go from bad to worse, and the natives would be exploited hy unscrupulous white men. If the friends of the Mission in New Zealand, Australia and the Old Country would stir up their respective Governments in the matter, perhaps some action would be taken; otherwise, the writer leared that the French would greatly harm the work that had already been done, besides making it increasingly difficult 'to win the natives from heathenism.