The Daily News. TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1911. THE FIJI OF TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 2, 27 June 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1911. THE FIJI OF TO-DAY.

This is an artistic book, crammed full of facts and word pictures, a book wherein the bitterness is made palatable with vivid anecdote, poetical description, and fine writing. The reader leaves it with difficulty, but he will take it up again, because he is not satisfied about Fiji. The author (Rev. J. W. Burton, of New Plymouth) has been hard put to to cram his facts into 304 pages. He has searched records with persistence and industry, but, better still, he has searched Fiji and his own mind for his conclusions. The intricate problem of Fiji is attacked with courage, skill and earnestness. The senses of the reader are lulled with the romance of the incomparable islands, with glances at a people of great beauty, with the sound of the league-long rollers breaking on the coral reef, and with the sensuous rhythm of tropical life. And so he finds the book pleasant—in spots. He will lay down the book and dream of coconut groves, of many-hued fishes in an amethystine sea, of handsome people emotionally offering their hearts to the All-1 Giver, and with devotional mein observing, with great correctness, the forms of the Christian religion. He will take up the book again, and will read on, but he will not sleep after he has read of old Fiji, of the days that have but recently disappeared, when the unspeakable atrocities of cannibalism were alike the pastime and the business of these people. He knows, as he reads, that not half has been told, but he admires the courage of the man who can set ' down so much in unmistakable terms. He instinctively feels that some of the truth is before him. and he is "lad that the missionary men and women who took their lives in their hands in old Fiji wiped out the stain of cannibalism and its nameless horrors. This is the great accomplishment, because it is human and physical. To inspire a cessation of cannibalism, the forms of religion, the ethics of the Christian man were used with effect. This book proves tliat the mass of the remnant of Fijians are as the old Fijians, except that they are not cannibals. It advances the statement that the Fijian race was doomed before the white man went to the country, hut the statement is of course based on the supposition that cannibalism, 6exual atrocities, dirt and disease would wipe out the people. Then tnere is the sorrowful proof that the Fijian has. all his old sins, with the exception of his atrocious appetite and his disregard of human life. These sins are diluted with his new beliefs. The new life has thrown a venec of civilised respectability over a- people wno see ii the imitation of the white man's forms and ceremonies the easiest way of "getting on" with him. That is at least the conclusion the man who has not soon Fiji must come to. The Fijian's powers- of endurance were never remarkable, and he lias lost the excuse for exercising either the endurance of the warrior, the navigator or the agriculturist. He is, ir fact, a lotus-cater, who prefers rapid race suicide in the way that seems pleasant- : est to him—per laziness. In Mr. Bur- , ton's exceptionally fine book he pays a deserved tribute to the martyrs of the church, who were not only willing to . give up all that most men consider worth having, but their lives as well. There is, indeed, nothing finer in human struggle than the self-abnegation of missionaries who, in seeking to annihilate heathenism, endeavor, too, nearly always without effect, to obtain a higher standard of physical well being, physical cleanliness and " ( >lily of occupation. The work begun so nobly is not finished. The Fijian has been persuaded to abandon his atrocious anil instinctive activities and to assume the appearance of right-doing according to the higher ethics of the white man. But although his deeds are no longer so Hack as in the days of old, he has. if one may be guided by the book, not reached a standard of living that will save him from mental and physical atrophy and ultimate death as a people. "They have the capacity of future maturity." quotes the author from ''The Challenge to Christian Missions," but it must be sadly concluded that this capacity must come only when the etiolated remnant of a people is so small that mental and physical salvation are well nigh useless. If the Fijian is "half devil and half child," the devil half is difficult to eliminate, and the child half more difficult to develop into maturity than the most optimistic can hope. The task of breeding an "inwardness" in a native race, absolutely foreign to its feelings and traditions, is gigantic, but is nobly undertaken. Tn the old days the Fijian was "treacherous and unreliable." He was "full of intrigue." He was not sincere. He had no idea of honor. He is still exactly as he was. with his more hideous sin abolished, but many more added. He is still immoral. Tn one year, out of 50S native church members 400 were struck off in a circuit for this crime. The hopeful author holds that the remnant is worth saving* He utters the truism that our vices are more deadly to a primitive people than to ourselves,

and of course the Fijian drinks alcohol, although he is prohibited by law, but "prohibition is a dead letter." The other "new" sins are set down as "impurity of a foreign sort"; to be plain, prostitution, Sabbath desecration (for which, of course, the white settler- is wholly to blame), avarice (for the reason that he has the land, can obtain money for it and so assure a competency), and the laziness that is killing him as fast as passible. "Civilisation through the British Government has created some of the problems of the Fijian people. It is for that Power to solve them." How? The Fijian is dying, and he smiles "as if it were comedy. From the missionary point of view, it is irony." In the year 1850 there were 200,000 Fijians; 10-day there are 86,000. They are dying much faster from diluted civilisation than from frank, bestial, villainous cannibalism. A learned commission found thirty-six causes for the decline of the Fijians. Probably one of the chief reasons was the abolition of polygamy. The author says: "It would seem, on theoretical grounds, that healthier and better children resulted" (under polygamy). Everybody knows that measles killed 40,000 Fijians in' 1875. Any civilised epidemic is infinitely more serious than among white people. Consumption is rampant. Sexual depravity makes the native an easy victim. The educated Fijian is a, smart imitator, but in Teality he is a grotesque person. He is not going to be physically saved by obtaining a clerkship.. "It would seem," says Mr. Burton, "that the ploughshare and pruning hook of peace have been more deadly engines of destruction than the sword spear of war," and it waa ever thus. Salvation? By work. We always say the same thing in respect to the Maori people, and know it to be true; yet we cannot prescribe work for people who need not work and who have the wherewithal to be.idle. The only means passible are by force. If it were a crime to be idle the raeo woukl survive. The race will die because it will be impossible to enforce activity. Of vital Imperial interest are the facts about the Hindoo in Fiji. The Hindoo is not dying. He has increased I by twenty-five millions in his own land in ten years. There are 40,000 of him (and her) in the Fijian Group. Four thousand are arriving annually. He is indentured as a laborer. It is a curious commentary on Christian Britain that these "heathens" nre forced by work to remain vigorous in mind and body while the "Christian" Fijian's body is uncontrolled and he is being pushed underground as fast as the disease of idleness can push him. The student is unable to believe that the remnant of Fijians can be saved. He is glad that the white man has forced him to desist from his worst practices, but despite the belief that the Fijian was "doomed" before the advert of the white man, it is, of course, certain that the white man has quickened the pace towards the grave. One other point. The educated and prominent Fijian is the poorest specimen of his race. The "unthinkable Fijian Balm," whether he is missionary or clerk, is of no utility whatever unless he can inspire his fellows with a love 'for physical toil. If he could combine religious and moral instruction with an insistence on a "ten hours day" of ceaseless toil, he would do more for his peop'e than any of his white or j black predecessors.