Puppets of the Administrator.

When the Samoans appealed to the New Zealand Minister in charge of Samoan Affairs for permission to make representations against certain actions of the Administrator and the Faipules, they were told that he would not consider anything unless it had previously been approved by the Faipules.

The Faipules, appointed by the Administrator, are among the very few who are now called loyalists to the Administration. They are the highest-paid Samoan officials. The Faipules, into whose heads the Administrator admits putting ideas, passed the "resolutions" above referred to. They are formed into boards to decide the banishment of other chiefs, whom the Administrator himself states they are jealous of. Is it any wonder that the Samoans have contended the Faipules are puppets of the Administrator and are equally responsible with him for the conditions which have brought about the present trouble?

The Faipules passed the "resolution" suppressing the exchange of fine mats, a time-honoured custom among the Samoans, by which they pay tribute to their dead, and without which the ceremonies associated with marriage, birth, etc., are not complete. Yet not one Faipule can hold his hand up to-day and say that he has not in some way or other committed a breach of that law or resolution.

The Faipules agreed to the "idea" that Samoa communal lands be individualised, and passed a "resolution" to that effect, but, although the enforcement of that resolution was attempted, it created such a disturbance that it broke down. Although the Samoans have asked for a statement of the Government finances being published in the vernacular, such page 12 as is done in all the neighbouring islands, the Faipules have not considered it. The idea has not been put into their heads from the proper quarter.

Sir George Richardson has given in evidence that he has a special phraseology for "the outside world" when reporting the conditions in Samoa. In "the outside world" he no doubt included the League of Nations, as is evidenced by the phraseology he used in his replies to questions put to him by the Mandates Commission. The now famous catechism describing the League of Nations as a body which had practically no control over mandates other than to receive an annual report from the mandatory, which was published among the Samoans in the Samoan language, with the same type and style in-paper and circulation as numerous other official bulletins then issued by the Administration, has now been described to the Mandates Commission as the work of a schoolmaster, with his (Sir George Richardson's) assistance. Sir James Parr, on the other hand, stated: "With regard to the catechism, he hoped too much would not be made of this paper, drawn up by the schoolmaster. It was obviously the work, in thought and language, of an unskilled hand: of a rather ill-informed person."

This is not a very complimentary description of Sir George Richardson, who, as Sir James Parr's colleague at the Session of the Mandates Commission, had admitted responsibility by the statement: "It was true that the catechism had been made by the schoolmaster, with his help...." There are several schoolmasters in Samoa, but Sir George carefully omits to mention the name of the schoolmaster who is responsible. Will he or the New Zealand Government now publish a correction of this "paper" published by "the unskilled hand of a rather ill-informed person"?

Sir George Richardson told the Mandates Commission that: "At the time of the Mau, there had only been seven current cases of Natives who had been temporarily moved under that Ordinance, and that they would probably have been pardoned or sent back within a very short time. Further on, the Minutes state: "Sir George Richardson could not say whether they were all chiefs. He would suggest they were half-and-half. He could not tell from the names."