Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

III

III

In 1913, Western Samoa was visited by Rupert Brooke.

"… The white population of Heaven [wrote the poet in an essay published in the New Statesman, soon after the out-break of world-war, a year later], as one would expect, is very small; but, as one wouldn't expect, it is composed of Americans, English, and Germans. About half Germans, for it has been a German colony for some fourteen years. But it is one of the few white 'possessions,' I suppose, where a decent white needn't feel ashamed of himself. For, though it's proper to deny that Germans can colonise, they have certainly ruled Samoa very well. In some part, no doubt, the luck has been with them—with the world—in this success. Samoa was one of their later and wiser attempts in colonising. The first governor was Herr Solf, the present Secretary for the Colonies, who is reputed to have started the administration of Samoa after a careful examination of our method of ruling Fiji, and with a due, but not complete, regard for the advice of the chief English and American settlers in Samoa. Certainly he started it very ably and wisely. By luck and good management those various forces which might destroy the beauty of Samoa are almost ineffectual. The fact that the missionaries are nearly all English puts a slight sufficient chasm between the spiritual and civil powers, and avoids that worst peril of these places—hierocracy. The trade of the islands is largely a monopoly of the 'German Firm,' a big affair which pays a few people in Hamburg fabulous percentages. So smaller traders aren't encouraged to flourish unduly; and the German Firm itself is too well fed to bother about extending. The Samoans, therefore, aren't exploited, spiritually or commercially, as much as they might be. By such slight chances beauty keeps a foothold in the world. The missionary's peace of mind may require that the Samoan should wear trousers, or the trader's pocket page 85that he should drink gin and live under corrugated iron. But the Government has discovered that these things are not good for the health of the Polynesian, so the Samoan wears his lava-lava and drinks his kava, and lives in his cool and lovely thatched hut, and is happy. And—final test of administration—the population is no longer decreasing."