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Territory have been clarified as to the role and responsibilities of the administering authority, including its commitments in relation to the welfare of the inhabitants and their progressive development towards self-government. Statements made by the Mission on numerous occasions were carefully worded to promote and clarify such understandings. 16. While the presentation by the New Zealand Government of the draft Trusteeship Agreement was seized upon as the favourable moment to launch the petition, the underlying causes go much deeper. They must be sought in the natural desire of the Samoan people to control their own affairs, in their troubled past and in nearly half a century of control by outside Powers. Historically, the petition is one more move in a consistent and dynamic struggle against the domination of Samoan affairs by outsiders. While the desires of the Samoans in part reflect the world-wide modern nationalist spirit which opposes all alien rule as such, they are also strongly marked by the grievances which the Samoans feel against the particular forms of foreign rule under which they have lived for the last fifty years. The memories of former greatness and of past independence, the resentment against the partitioning by the Three Powers, the disturbances that occurred under the German regime, the Mau movement which was initiated as a protest against unpopular measures taken by the New Zealand administration and which dominated the life of Western Samoa from 1926 to 1936, the strong reactions against all kinds of discrimination made between Samoans and Europeans on a racial basis, the present-day dissatisfaction concerning alleged failures of New Zealand rule, all go to make up the general pattern against which the petition must be considered. Again and again, in evidence given before the Mission by Samoans, as well as in songs heard during entertainments, this double trend of Samoan feeling was brought to the surface. "We want to be free ; we want self-government because it is our birthright " —and, "We want roads, and schools, and health —more than what New Zealand has given us." 17. The evidence before the Mission would seem to indicate that the Samoan leaders, in formulating the petition, did not have clearly in mind at first what was meant by self-government. The petition speaks of " our ultimate aim of self-government." It was only later—when the petition went forward, the coming of the Mission was announced, and the regular meetings of Samoan representatives began—that the objective of immediate self-government took form and grew in strength. Here, it seemed, was the golden opportunity to get control of the country. As one spokesman said: " This is the time. There is no to-morrow, only to-day. This is what is behind the minds of the Samoans."