Samoa Under the Sailing Gods
VI
VI
Experience has clearly proved that Mandatory status is a menace to the people of the mandated territory. The ignorance revealed by the Mandates Commission concerning Samoa was abysmal. Yet its members did not hesitate to advocate the adoption of violent measures. For more than one reason apparently they hate continued evidence of unrest in the mandated territories. At all costs also, the Mandatory Power must, in the first instance, uphold the local administration, for fear of increasing the power of the Mandates Commission.
It seems impossible that the system can last. But lest it does, I would state that the right of petition to the Commission has been established worthless. A petition signed by more than 93 per cent. of the Samoan tax-payers was referred to as a petition "by a certain number of natives"—and ignored. In the case of Europeans petitioning the Mandates Commission, they simply put themselves up to be shot at and cannot possibly do any good.
I would recall that the Permanent Mandates Commission has been proved lazy, incompetent, and capable of making vital omissions in quoting from its own Minutes—when trying to save its face. It must be obvious, I think, that the men who should be appointed to such an institution are, generally speaking, the very last who would be appointed; and in view of this the sooner the present pack—with perhaps one or two exceptions, notably M. Palacios—are swept from Geneva, and the system resigned to the limbo whence it came, the better for the world and its prospects.
The most pressing need of the times is to curb the activities of the reformers and cranks who seize on all helpless peoples—not excepting children—and inflict incalculable misery and mischief. The stamping out of the Mandates Commission would result in the destruction of a certain forcing-ground for such as these.
Unless youth rises and exerts itself, there is likely to be little beauty and decency left in the world. Authority is too much in the hands of the hypocrites and old men.
Regarding the Pacific Islands generally, it lies in the power of the Prince of Wales—and of him alone at present—to save countless lives, by issuing a manifesto to the natives under British rule on the subject of clothing ( vide Chapter iii) in relation to Christianity. Is it too much to look to him for a lead?