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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

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The administration of justice in Savaii during 1923 and 1924 amounted to a scandal I should think without modern parallel in a British possession. I remember during a Court case in a native house at Salailua, the principal witness for the Crown being missing. His parents suddenly arrived and announced vociferously that he was locked in a trader's copra shed immediately across the road. And although his presence was urgently needed in Court, and the trader—the defendant in the case—was there, no doubt with the key of the shed in his pocket, yet the Crown made no attempt to secure the witness's release, despite the fact that natives could be seen conversing with someone through cracks in the copra-shed door. This was the trader who, on a former occasion, had filled the Resident Commissioner up with whisky. For this the trader had a medicinal permit, and, according to the local postmaster, used sometimes to send bottles through the post addressed to high officials in Apia, over whom he was for ever boasting his influence, even in my hearing. He was once convicted of assaulting a cripple with a riding-whip—owing to the insistence of other traders—but generally speaking he seemed to be sans reproche so far as the Government was concerned and certainly sans peur. The whisky apparently was very effective. So much for another aspect of Prohibition!