AUSTRALIA’S MANDATE OYER NEW GUINEA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 243, 12 September 1929, Page 6

AUSTRALIA’S MANDATE OYER NEW GUINEA.

Australia is experiencing much the same trouble in carrying out its mandate over New Guinea as New Zealand has experienced in carrying out the mandate over Western Samoa, and much the same causes have been at work in both cases, as politicians, in their desire to secure some sort of a stick to beat their respective Governments with, have not hesitated to asasil both the Administrators and the officials in charge of the mandated territories in the hope of discrediting the Governments responsible for their appointment. The action taken by certain members of the Commonwealth Parliament in that direction has not been without its effect on the Mandates Commission, which, reporting to the League Council, says that “the commission last year was disturbed by certain aspects of the administration of New Guinea.” Neither the Administrator’s report of 192 T-28, nor Sir Granville Eyrie’s verbal explanations have allayed the apprehensions of the commission, wflick are said to be “confirmed from reliable information.” According to the High Commissioner for Australia (Sir Granville Eyrie) the criticisms upon which the Mandates Commission has based its “apprehensions” are covered by certain questions that were put in the House of Representatives on the 29th of September, 1927, and on further information gathered at the Mission Conference held at Rabaul in 1927, the far-reaching resolutions adopted at the latter having apparently suggested that the moral, social and material welfare of the (natives was not receiving sufficient attention, and that certain abuses were not being remedied. But Sir Granville Eyrie points out that the resolutions passed at the Mission Conference had been adopted in their entirety, and were being acted upon, and “the Administration was strictly enforcing the law relating to recruitment and doing its utmost to check certain customs of the natives that were repugnant to the principles of humanity.” The Administration may, and probably has, in checking the latter, given rise to criticisms that are not altogether justifiable. It has had to deal with more savage races, wild and uncultivated, than New Zealand has had to govern in Western Samoa, and, to that extent, it has had greater difficulties to encounter than its criticis and the commission have made sufficient allowance for. It has had also to deal with not merely the passive resistance that the New Zealand Administration has encountered in Western Samoa, but with active hostility on the part of the fierce hill tribes in New Guinea. There again sufficient allowance has not been made for the difficulties df the Administration, and if the politicians had not been quite so active in condemning it, the Mandates Commission would not have reported to the League Council in the manner it has done. In the case of Western Samoa there is always the danger that the persistent agitation maintained against the exercise of the mandate by New Zealand may, from its misleading character, affect the position and the warning note struck by Sir Joseph Ward last week, when the Samoan report was under discussion, was timely.