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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

III

page 251

III

During his first year of office the native poll-tax was abolished by the new Administrator. The medical-tax had already been compounded. There was now no direct taxation upon the Samoans. An extra ten shillings a ton was placed instead upon the copra export duty. Native taxes outstanding—those in arrears—it was announced, would be collected as opportunity might afford. The Fono of Faipules was disbanded. The services of the Director of Agriculture dispensed with. The Agricultural Department was merged into the grossly inefficient Native Department. The services of the Director were secured by the neighbouring kingdom of Tonga.

As head of the Native Department, Mr. Griffin had been succeeded, at the end of 1926, by Mr. Lewis, a missionary of the Australasian Methodist Mission. Mr. Griffin died about five months later. It was the Rev. Mr. Lewis who, in July 1927, circulated throughout Savaii, in the Samoan language, a telegram in which the following passage occurred:

"The Associated Governments of all the world have passed a law, thus: No complaint of any nature from any country under any Mandate or protection such as Samoa will be able to present any complaints before the League of Nations, who will be unable to receive them."

This, of course, was sheer nonsense. The only proviso of the League Council was that such petitions had to go through the Mandatory Power. A translation of this telegram was published in the Samoa Guardian of August 11, 1927, and its accuracy never challenged. General Richardson denied all knowledge of the matter before the Mandates Commission—with regard, however, to its publication in a newspaper in London.

On October 9, 1928, Colonel Allen induced Tamasese and Tuimalealiifano, a former Fautua or Adviser to the Administrator (whose evidence the Royal Commission had refused to hear)—the two principal members of the Mau—to meet him. The meeting, so he stated, was quite inconclusive.

In November, just as things in Samoa were believed, through sheer inanition, to be settling down, and the Reform Party was on the point of being thrown out of office by a General Election page 252in New Zealand, Tamasese was suddenly arrested at Vaimoso. His arrest was covered by two machine-guns mounted on motor-lorries and effected by thirty-five military police armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. The high chief attempted to run, had blank cartrides discharged at him at immediate range, and, according to one of the military police in an article in a New Zealand newspaper, rolled over on the ground believing himself shot. He was handcuffed, taken before the Court, sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment in Samoa for contempt of court—having ignored a summons for his 1927 poll-tax—and, having served this, was then taken to New Zealand to work out in Auckland Jail an additional sentence of six months for "resisting arrest."