A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

CHAPTER IV

THE LAND OF THE TALKING MEN

I only stretch the long-bow lightly when I say that Western Samoa’s political troubles began with a small medical problem and ended with a great one. Certainly the finish of the Mau Rebellion was a picture of hatred’s reaction upon public health.

The malanga of 1924 was in full swing, and I was one of the party. From days of old the malanga has been a royal progress, an annual window-dressing on the march, as it was in England when a grateful populace turned out to greet Henry VIII with polished hauberks and freshly dry-cleaned plumes. In Samoa’s year of plenty, 1924, the malanga was still an impressive show. His Britannic Majesty’s proconsul, Governor of New Zealand’s ten-year-old Mandate, had full-costumed a military display and was accepting the feasts or listening to the bands and musical orators all around Savaii.

Since Samoa’s dawn of time the Tulafale (the orator or “talking man”) had commanded leadership. No funeral, wedding or political controversy in the Fono (meeting place) has been official without a competition of orators, first on one side, then on the other, showering palaver or threats neatly wrapped in compliments. In the years of the Mandate the Talking Men were still importantly featured, and that wolf-gray, bullet-headed old British soldier, Major-General Sir George S. Richardson, had made many stops along his two weeks’ march, to examine the well-being of a people he governed all too kindly.

Under this malanga’s careless pageantry I witnessed a small pregnant incident. It dropped another of the seeds which, in a few years, sprouted into the wicked flower of an insurrection already germinating. In my report to the Foundation I described this official tour as “unique in my experience and remarkable for its results in obtaining the confidence of the native and his co-operation in measures for his own benefit. In the party there was the Governor, the Commissioner for Native Affairs, the Resident Commissioner of Savaii, the Chief Medical Officer, the Collector of Customs and Taxes, the Governor’s A.D.C., Dr. Buxton and myself.” Fau’mui’na, high chief, led thirty Boy Scouts called “Fetu o Samoa,” the Star of Samoa; there were native police, carriers and attendants. The Fetu went in front, beating a drum, behind them was the flagbearer, next the Governor with his retinue, then the endless queue of followers. It was a parade to touch the imagination of a people susceptible to pomp and ceremony.

In the village reception house there would be the usual kava ceremony, the food presentation, the long hour devoted to exchange of courtesies. Then the Tulafale, the professional orators, would unlimber their eloquence for the benefit of the Governor: “We in our ignorance and humility turn to you for the light of your wisdom, as the flower turns to the sun. We are the children, you are the father upon whom we depend for guidance. We know that you love us, and we return your love....” When you hear this doled out day after day you begin to believe the Orator. The simple Samoan child of nature—and watch out or he’ll have the shirt off your back. Witness how his shrewd diplomacy all but had the United States, Germany and Britain tearing at each other’s throats in 1900. When Germany got her cut in the colony the Samoan’s connivance worried her to a point where she only tried to control them with punitive raids....

But in the Governor’s malanga of 1924 the Orators were laying it on thick. They would look into every gift-basket, call out the donor’s name with praise if the taro were big and the fish well-cooked. If the contribution looked stingy they would be very frank about it, amidst popular mirth.

Public health was never relaxed in this bright journey of inspection. The Boy-Scoutish Fetu, wearing nothing but the lavalava and a cap with the emblem Star, would give the people exhibition games, object lessons in simple sports that would keep the villagers away from picture shows and dissipations in Apia. The Administration was sensible in showing the all but naked bodies of the young Fetu, to illustrate the health advantages of light clothing in the tropics. The Administration was always rational and kind.

At one of the settlements the orations and ceremonies had been unusually long. As in every place we stopped, the doctors had lined up the population for quick inspection of ulcers, skin lesions, eye conditions, enlarged spleens, or any other sign of disease. Our time was more than up, we had to be pushing on. What happened then was certainly no fault of Dr. Ritchie, a Medical Officer whose patient and enlightened work in restoring a failing race had earned him a crown in Heaven, twice over. It was a fault of tact, reacting on that interesting intangible, the Samoan temperament.

We had been there long enough for the natives to report any sickness in the region. Now we were hurrying to board the launch. What happened then was characteristic of Samoan dilly-dally. Several natives came running up with the cry: “There’s a woman who has been having a baby for five days! It’s half in, half out!” (They were describing, I suppose, a “hand presentation.”) All Savaii had known that we were there, but it had just occurred to them to call a doctor. Dr. Ritchie, on the march, had no instruments with him, and experience told him that the woman was as good as dead. To examine her would mean an out-of-the-way trip, and Governor Richardson was impatient for the pompous malanga to move on. So it moved.

Even then I felt the seriousness of that diplomatic blunder. Here was a chance for the Administration, out for show, to make a beautiful gesture. Of course there was no hope for the woman, but it would have made an immense impression of kindness if the party had turned their launch around and wasted a day with the dying mother. It would have had the dramatic effect they wanted.

But the mistake was made among a people who were nursing many grievances, most of them imaginary. When the calamitous Mau Rebellion broke in 1927 that incident was remembered. Years later, after the messy thing had subsided, one of the Mau leaders, Fau’mui’na—since promoted to a good government post—told me that official neglect of the woman did much toward fomenting revolt. That and the shooting of Tamasese, exiled as a nuisance and a royal pretender....

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No war-captured country ever had a better government than these islands enjoyed after New Zealand’s soldiery took over in 1914 a group which the League of Nations later changed from German Samoa to the mandate of Western Samoa. It was in refreshing contrast to Australia’s early rule in New Guinea. Even before the uniformed Anzacs had left Samoa there was a clear-headed scientific attempt to look into social and health conditions. New Zealand, with her high cultural standards, had long studied the splendid race of Maoris, whom she had governed well. At home a million-and-a-half New Zealanders lived alongside 70,000 Maoris whose population had increased and whose rights had been maintained under a benevolent rule. Yes, Western Samoa was fortunate in her new government which had never shown a selfish financial motive behind any of its acts. But the Mau Rebellion came, and its “cruel oppressions” have been so sensationalized by newspaper propagandists that the average reader asks: How did the administrators come to grow hoofs and horns overnight? Well, they didn’t.

In 1923 Dr. T. Russell Ritchie came in as Chief Medical Officer and his four years there were as remarkable for scientific achievement as anything accomplished by Gorgas in cleaning up Cuba and Panama. In civil administration you’ll find mistakes everywhere this side of Heaven. But even the mistakes were motivated by a fiery zeal to show the world New Zealand’s disinterestedness. Education and public health were the features in a program so thorough that it should not be forgotten.

It was a demonstration of preventive medicine unexcelled in the tropics. By 1926 a death rate of over thirty per thousand was reduced to twenty in four Samoan districts. Yaws was practically eliminated, infant welfare work had brought down the average mortality under five years to the lowest in the Pacific—before Tonga worked out that problem. Soil sanitation had become the rule instead of the exception; in 1921 New Zealand had sent a commission to Australia to study the Foundation’s hookworm campaigns there; Ritchie had adapted it to Western Samoa with marvelous results. He was bringing in pure piped water; on islands like Savaii, which is very rainy but so lava-porous that it has no streams, he had overridden Polynesia’s superstition and used church roofs as watersheds for storage tanks. New Zealand’s successful medical work was becoming a model for other island groups. There could not have been a better one. Germany’s last census in 1911 showed a population of 33,476. In 1917, after three years in possession, New Zealanders counted 37,196. In 1918 pandemic influenza, a scourge that baffled world medicine, mowed the natives down. But the Mandate’s care brought them back so steadily that in 1933—despite the hellish work of the Mau Rebellion—our yaws campaign workers counted 48,300. This last estimate, I think, was about 1,500 short of the actual number. Confused conditions, following years of revolt, made the count extremely difficult. In 1936 the census showed 55,000.

From 1921 to 1931, half of those years consumed by the Mau’s hateful destruction, New Zealand had given to Samoa between £12,500 and £14,000 annually for medical purposes alone. None of this was in the form of a loan; it was free as a birthday present. Add to this New Zealand’s gifts of public works,—like the native piped water supplies, for instance,—and you have a total of some £250,000 devoted to Western Samoa with no expectation of any return but the moral satisfaction of seeing a race revived.

Then what was the matter with Samoa that she wanted to rebel?

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Samoa has been plowed over so often by romance-hawkers, big and little, that it would hardly be worth my time or yours to try to revisualize the moonlight and song, the deep-grooved valleys, the lacy waterfalls infested by golden girls with tumbled raven hair. On my frequent professional visits I saw their unromantic side, yet always admired a people who refused to be coaxed or slave-driven into the sort of work which, to them, seemed unnecessary. Don’t dismiss the Samoan as a happy good-for-nothing. On sterile Savaii I have seen them carrying farm produce on their backs, mile after mile; it was the old way, and they were working their own land. If Samoan racial pride seems to you to be no more than backwoods vanity, remember the Polynesian brain, one of humanity’s best. And remember that in both Samoas, Western and American, there are as many people, perhaps, as you’ll find in one of New York’s longer streets. The old days are done for; the days of brave canoe-voyaging over uncharted blue waters. Among their ancestors were baffled Alexanders, weeping for more worlds to conquer. The worlds they found were so small, so scattered....

They have settled down to a small-town complex. For hours on end they sit around the kava circle, talking, talking. We are outnumbered, they say, but we are still Samoans. The New Faith is well enough. We must still observe our ancient ceremonies, our rules of courtesy, our carefully graded social distinctions, and every complication of our political structure. Listen to that old chief over there. He can recite his ancestry for thirty or more generations back. He is an aristocrat, and his memory is long, they say. All our memories are long.

This is not all poppycock. The Samoan is a born gentleman. Although books have been a stranger to him since the dawn of history, he is reading now. He is a nationalist and his reasoning mind has told him that his nationalism will have international support. Inwardly he believes that he is smarter than a European, and he wants a Samoa that is governed by Samoans. He looks across toward the Kingdom of Tonga and asks, “If they govern themselves, why can’t we? Tongans don’t work for Europeans. They hire them.”

All such ideas are splendid, if impractical and slightly ridiculous. They had much to do with the disastrous Mau.

The good Samoan mind is still factional. When the Dutch explorers first saw Apia they found a people who lacked the solidarity that welded Tonga. Each of Samoa’s three main islands had its own complicated aristocracy and tribal intrigue. It was Japan without a Mikado. You would have thought that the descendants of voyaging warriors would have developed the leadership that pulls a country together. Perhaps the Samoans were too innately civilized to crave a Hitler and a generation of massacres. It was the European’s job to drag them out of the Stone Age into the Bomb Age—all in a century and a half. By 1900 they could use rifles well, as witness the small butchery of Marines that led to the partition of the two Samoas between Germany and the United States.

Cloying praise has shared in spoiling the native Samoan. Robert Louis Stevenson was the worst sinner. It was too easy to sentimentalize their sweet and gentle women, their courteous patriarchal chiefs, the waterfalls that sang like fountains day and night. Before Hollywood went South Sea and flattered them with the camera, Stevenson had told us in charming, balanced sentences how he had lived among Greeks in Eden’s Vale. Samoan conceit became elephantoid under this pretty coddling, and the abundant orators around the kava ring told them again that they occupied the Navel of the World. It was never raucous boasting. As I have said, the Samoans are a race of gentlefolk.

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The medical problem in Western Samoa was more than a matter of lining them up, treating them, sending them home. In American Samoa, our Navy tried the efficiency method, but it didn’t work very well with a people who live on ceremony as much as Japan did under the Shogunate. A sick Samoan, if he has rank, pays for his operation a thousandfold before he is home and recovered.

The Samoan social system could ramify its way across a hundred library shelves. To be brief, its core is the Matai, or master. This title goes to the head of the Ainga, or family, and is handed down like an heirloom. The title Tufunga is high, and carries with it the greatest dignity, and the honors that go with it have always been recognized.

To the practical modern doctor the old ceremonial is what can’t be cured and must be endured. Take the ceremonial journey they call the malanga—if a Samoan goes visiting relatives and takes the whole village along, it becomes a malanga, and the visitors are apt to eat the host’s provisions down to the last taro, while he bites his nails in secret and publicly implores his guests to stay longer. But this generosity has a true Christmas spirit—you give something and expect something back. Pretty soon the host will be on a malanga of his own—then it will be his turn to do the feasting, and yours to pay for it.

Treating a sick Samoan is an ordeal for the doctor and it is not always so easy on the patient. N.M.P. Ielu Kuresa, an honored graduate of our School, wrote an article for our medical journal, the Native Medical Practitioner, in which he described the rigmarole which surrounds a simple surgical operation. This is his account, in brief:—

“To be operated on by a doctor does not mean the doctor’s bill only. Custom and etiquette must be complied with. In the first place, the scene will be at the patient’s own home.... Having come to the conclusion that he must be operated on, he will first inform his immediate family of his intentions. At this stage a daughter or son, perhaps residing some distance away, will have to be sent for in order to participate in a family meeting to decide whether the sick person’s wishes should be carried out, or whether a further try of other native medicine or treatment be applied.” Every Matai, under these circumstances, must make peace with his kinsmen; otherwise “it means carrying with you bad luck and perhaps better chances of dying. Samoans are very particular about their selection of physicians and will travel miles to get to a good surgeon, leaving another doctor who might be close to their village.”

All the related Matais are informed of the coming event. Then the Orators are brought into play. They assemble at the sick man’s house, and there is a contest of eloquence, wishing the patient “all good luck and God’s never-failing help....” So the Orators must get their pork and the sympathizers must feast—“... food in such a quantity as befits the title of the sick person ... a whole roasted pig, or even two, bread or biscuits and of course taro by the score ... the first installment on operating expenses.” Any other stricken member of the Ainga, a wife or child, gets the same ceremony, scaled down to the social importance of the sufferer.

“The first expense, then, can be from £1 to £5, to be conservative.” If the Matai happens to be hard up he must borrow pigs from his in-laws. “At times, just to conform with Samoan customs, if no pigs are forthcoming from the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law, or the sister, the Ainga must resort to parting with a share of the family lands, or some other form of property.”

This blow-off ends the first scene. A boat is probably necessary to carry the patient to the hospital. The crew offers its services free—But wait. The expedition is called ole si’ingama’i, “party-carrying-the-sick.” The boating expedition swells to a heavy-laden fleet. And don’t forget the Tulafale, the all-pervading Orators, bringing their wives and children and in-laws.

Etiquette demands that there shall be a stop or two on the way. Etiquette also demands that leading families provide a splendid barbecue. Samoan hospitality, carefully gauged by the family code, holds the patient long enough to get well—or else. The visitors know that it is their ancient right to demand food, and that their hosts will be their guests someday and there’ll be another big picnic. The visitors make gifts, too; usually fine mats and tapa cloths. These gifts are a part of the prevalent gentleman’s code.

The patient gets to the hospital—alive, let’s say. “Parties-carrying-the-sick” are not allowed in wards, so they are settled in a base-camp in a near-by village, as guests of the Ainga there. The visitors contribute more pigs, and mats which cost from one pound up, according to historic value. These expenses, Ielu writes, “will no doubt appear absurd to the European mind.... It may all be in the course of life, according to the Samoan way of living, yet a pig is a pig and a fine mat is a fine mat.”

Then comes the operation. The native pastor and an Orator have been at the patient’s bedside. The parson and the Tulafale have said their prayer, made their speeches. Back in the camp there is wholesale cooking. The occasion demands ... “something to mark the occurrence. The presentation will be done publicly and the food announced aloud wherever it is being presented. The announcing is usually done when the patient has been brought back to the ward after the operation.”

The sick man, if he got well, was in for such an entertainment bill as never faced Lucullus. If he died the funeral would be on the same lavish scale and his family would have to pay for it.

Ielu tells of operating on I’inga, an aristocrat. Ielu was a brilliant surgeon, and the patient’s elephantoid scrotum was such a simple matter that he let him walk a short distance to the hospital. That should have cut the cost. He didn’t need boats or a base camp or a lusty entourage. However, this proud I’inga was compelled by custom to make a large food presentation every day of his illness; daily 100 loaves of bread with sugar and butter and two whole roast pigs went down to his account. His title of Matai was a high one, therefore he had to pay in fine mats for the daily sua (pig) presentations. The party cost him five pounds in bread, and pigs were worth about seven pounds apiece. The whole job set him back forty-four pounds, thirteen shillings.

Surgical and hospital fees came to four pounds.

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One night in 1924 I was dining at Vailima with Governor Richardson, who lived in the romantic house which Robert Louis Stevenson used to occupy. Above it loomed the steep hill which is topped by Stevenson’s tomb. So many tourist-ladies have climbed the mud-slippery trail to visit this shrine that I blush to mention it.

Governor Sir George had risen to high office by force of sheer ability. War had advanced him from the rank of drill sergeant to general command. A born Englishman, he had immediately won New Zealand’s respect for his Mandate administration. You had to admire him. He had the middle-class Englishman’s anti-Yankee prejudices; a brush with our United States Navy control in American Samoa hadn’t helped. Don’t think that he was any martinet when it came to native administration. Devotedly, honestly he wished to be the father of his flock. But he seemed rather too self-satisfied. Touchy Samoa politely resented his attitude, “See what we are doing for you. Come to us if there’s anything you want done.” I longed to tell him that he was doing too much for the Samoan, feeding him with modernism faster than he could digest it. But you didn’t tell things to Governor Richardson. He told you.

At that meeting, as at many others, we had discussed the need of a modern native medical school in Fiji, and as usual Richardson had been favorable to the plan. The expenses of governing a country that had 3,000 chiefs to 40,000 population was the only thing that held him back until Queen Salote’s generous offer in 1926, when he pledged Samoa to share in a scheme in which he had always heartily believed. During that long evening’s talk in 1924 I didn’t mention the woman on Savaii who died in childbirth. But if a competent Native Medical Practitioner had been on the spot that day the story of Richardson’s administration might have had a happier ending. I think he had a right to feel proud of the medical situation, for the Mandate was already training native nurses in the model hospitals, was using one of our old-school Native Medical Practitioners, and had socialized medicine to a point where every Samoan paid a head-tax of about five dollars a year for all treatments.

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Years of administering that model colony bred a certain smugness in the good Governor Richardson; and smugness is always dangerous in handling native affairs. Early in 1927 he went to the New Hebrides on a Royal Commission with Governor Sir Eyre Hutson of Fiji. Richardson was on the crest of the wave, feeling his oats in every pore. When the party got back to Fiji I wanted to return his Samoan hospitality, but Richardson’s mind harbored a single thought: go up to Government House again and tell Sir Eyre how to run Fiji. Hutson was one of the smoothest products of the colonial school, and he had learned enough about the treatment of native races to have made Fiji a model for all students of island administration. However, Richardson got to Government House and told Hutson; and Hutson smiled rosily, suavely agreeing that he ought to study Samoa and get some tips on how to run Fiji.

When Richardson finished telling Hutson and returned to Apia, the Mau Rebellion broke right in his face.

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As a doctor I cannot diagnose Samoa’s illness without looking further into the causes that led up to it. The status of the half-caste in Polynesia was at the root of the disturbance. While in dark-skinned Melanesia a touch of white is often a stigma, it is a matter of pride to the peach-tan Maoris, Cook Islanders and Samoans. The European may turn his shoulder on the half-caste, but the Polynesian forgets his insular pride in an eager mating with Europeans; every child with a trace of Northern blood is looked upon as something which approaches the racial ideal. The Samoan highly respects the child of a mixed union—provided the native mother has not been deserted by her husband or mate. There is the case of one distinguished British scientist who experimented with going native, chose a Samoan woman, wore a lavalava around his belly and a hibiscus flower over his ear. Called back to London to account for himself, he left the girl where he found her—and the baby. It was no disgrace that she had to do washing; needy aristocrats often do that. Nor was she ashamed that she couldn’t show a marriage license. She hung her head because Johnson (I’ll call him) had deserted her, and before the baby was born. Johnson wandered to Chicago, where he died; but his beach-widow carefully guards her beautiful son for fear that some of his father’s relatives may come along and claim him.

I heard two half-caste boys quarreling. One howled, “Jonisoni!” and the other yelled, “Anisoni!” They were not accusing one another of bastardy, but raising the accusation that their mothers had been deserted by Johnson and Anderson.

When Germany ruled Samoa every man whose father was registered as a European could himself register as a European. Some so classified were less than one thirty-second white, and many of them could not speak a word of English. When New Zealand took over she had to accept the Made-in-Germany rule. The mental and moral worth of these mixed bloods depended, of course, on the quality of their parents. The product varies; but the more I travel the more I see the brilliant results when two superior beings of opposing races are bred together. After a while I’m going to tell about a few New Zealanders who are legally classed as Maoris.

The fuse that led up to the Mau explosion carried one very dangerous combustible—half-caste jealousy of European social prestige. The jealousy was mutual, I think, for the European wife grew watchful of the lovely half-caste girl with her soft, long-lashed eyes and velvet skin. This girl was getting an education and her parents were grumbling because she could not step into the social sphere which her mind, her manners and her beauty demanded, in all fairness.

Insurgency centered in O. F. Nelson, a half-caste who possessed genius both for business and for political leadership. The chain of Nelson trading stores had bulked him about $1,500,000, an unthinkable fortune to be gathered out of Samoa. Like Nelson, the discontented half-castes had educated their daughters in colleges and upper schools, yet had gained no status for them in European society. The full-blooded Samoan looked up to Nelson, one derived from their own race and so powerful that the Government had to come to him for favors. When he rode out in his handsome car he displayed a coat of arms as large and gaudy as the Governor’s own, and his A.D.C. was in uniform. The native majority was under his control.

Mau means “Stand Fast,” and the stand was against real and fancied wrongs. Trouble brewed when Western Samoan traders howled because American Samoa was outbuying them in the copra market. The quarrel became a crazy patchwork, with Richardson trying to patch the patches. Half-castes were clamoring to be counted as Europeans, even though the change would have endangered their rights. Then Prohibition, that indomitable mischief-maker, raised its old silk hat. Because the Customs House, through an error, got more than its share of liquor on one consignment, the League of Nations, which controlled the Mandate’s thirst, ordained that Western Samoa’s Europeans should have liquor for medical purposes only. Up to then strong drink had been wisely forbidden the natives. Under Prohibition, indignant Europeans taught Samoans to make a vile intoxicant called “bush beer,” and to help themselves to a share of it. All this added native drunkenness to the pattern of revolt.

The Orators were putting their heads together. At every Fono the Talking Men intoned “Samoa for the Samoans” and suavely asked the aristocrats, “How can nobles and chiefs serve under this common fellow Richardson?” The mess, which largely interests me from a medical point of view, harked back again to the Governor’s Malanga, which I described at the opening of this chapter; it included two officials who were later accused of corrupting Samoan youths. A schoolteacher who showed us around Savaii was also involved. Two suicides resulted from the scandal, which set the Talking Men off again, asking why the Europeans sent such people to teach them morals.

On top of these grievances, and dozens of smaller ones, came the Mau. At first it was passive resistance, then in 1928 there was bloodshed. Tamasese, a justly exiled pretender to Samoa’s shadow-throne, came back to Apia with a howling demonstration. Richardson, tired and sick, had resigned in favor of Colonel Allen, a New Zealander with a cool blue eye and guts to spare. When the mob battered in Officer Abram’s head with a stone Allen’s police fired on them, as they were ordered to do in case of violence.

That was all the blood spilled; but it might have been better for the Samoans if the rebellion had been stifled by force of arms. It went on for years, passively. Nelson was banished to New Zealand, where he managed his revolt by wire. After the quarrel was settled, over the festering carcass of Samoa, there came Nelson’s Napoleonic return. But there was no Waterloo; only a popular clamor to give him the place of leader in the native parliament as well as to admit him to the European Legislative Council. The new Administration refused him this bi-racial privilege with the remark, “You can’t wear trousers and a lavalava at the same time.”

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As you study small life under the lens and watch the microcosm work out its cycle, so you can look at Western Samoa and see the after-effects of war over this wrongheaded world. The doctor rushes in afterwards and tries to patch up the innocent and the guilty. Samoa, when the Mau subsided, knew a terrible aftermath. The Samoans hadn’t got back Samoa; all they had received was a resurgence of the native diseases which a careful Mandate had struggled so valiantly and successfully to cleanse. Devoted men had worked for many years to accomplish what five years of rebellion had undone.

It was five years after the Mau began before co-operation between the Government and the Rockefeller Foundation could begin salvage operations. When I returned to Samoa to have the Foundation’s share in cleaning up the Mau pigsty, I shook my head at the sorry change. The beautiful Samoan children—and nothing can be more beautiful—were pitiful little things, their skins a scab, their faces eaten with yaws. The tea-rose skin had faded to gray; intestinal parasites were sucking again at their blood and lymph. The Mau had turned against its own people instead of its enemy. Argument had triumphed over reason, the Polynesian had junked his high intelligence and become an Intellectual.

Samoa for the Samoans! Ignore every order of the white intruder with all their nosy medical men, dinging away at keeping clean, keeping the water pure, reporting sickness. Ignore their impudent instructions about repairing fly-proof latrines. Ignore vital statistics. Tear them up. Ignore everything but Samoa for Samoans.

The latrines rotted or were torn down by the indignant. Water supplies festered. Clean in his habits from days of old, the Samoan jettisoned the ancient tabu and gave over mischievously to soil pollution. Fields and villages stank with a foulness which defied the Administration while it killed the Samoans. It was hard to approach some of the settlements, they were so odorous of decay. Samoa had certainly cut off her nose to spite her face.

It was impossible to collect vital statistics during that spell of madness. The death toll was a matter of eye measurement. We plunged in with rolled-up sleeves to give all possible help. Tragic as it was, the devastation proved to be less than that of the influenza epidemic in 1918. Yaws was the principal problem, almost universal with the young. A giant campaign was organized, our combined workers gave 89,000 injections, including treatments and re-treatments. For experience has taught medicine that this disease is stubborn and may reappear in deep-seated conditions after the superficial symptoms have vanished. However, in our wide mass treatments our main effort was to cure the open sores which spread infection.

In 1933, when New Zealand took its yaws census of Samoa, the figures showed the population on the upgrade again. The forward march will go on, I think, unless some Liberator decides to turn these islands over to Germany or Russia or Italy. Then again there will be hell in warm water.

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American Samoa, Uncle Sam’s split in the three-cornered deal of 1900, I did not survey until my Pacific adventures were nearing a close, although after 1926 I visited it briefly every year. The reason for my delay is simple; I had to wait for Uncle Sam’s invitation. Working so long on the other side of the line and rather feeling the American lack of interest in an American enterprise, I’m afraid that I was rather prejudiced against the administration of our lovely little possession, centered in Pago Pago.

In many ways I was happily disappointed when I came at last to make a short survey—all in spite of the fact that I was annoyed by the unfairness of our home folks in their comparison of the two Samoas. So many sweet lady-tourists from Boston and Keokuk have sailed into Pago Pago’s bright waters, which lie smooth as a lake inside the leafy oval of a dead volcano. There’s the old Flag again and our gallant sailors in white. Why, this is the naughty land of Miss Sadie Thompson! Why, we’ve all seen that lovely, wicked play called “Rain”—but the scenery doesn’t do Pago Pago anything like justice.... It’s all so peaceful and orderly, isn’t it? Quite different from Western Samoa over there, where they’ve certainly made a hash of it. See the handsome Commandant, who seems to boss Pago Pago with a velvet glove. Let’s call him “Uncle Samoa”!

This is a sort of autopropaganda, born of national pride. Overnight trippers cannot see—how can they?—that Uncle Sam has guinea-pigged a race, or that part of a race which is identical to the people on the western islands. The tourists haven’t had time to find out that the New Zealand Administration, working against great odds with a population about four times as large as that which America controls, is a shining example of government for the people who must be governed. And in spite of the Mau Rebellion, New Zealand is building up a better racial spirit. The people in their Samoa are better educated, better prepared to meet civilized conditions. They speak better English and are far, far better mannered.

Uncle Samoa, in fact, is an honest quarterdeck hero. His real interest in his share of the islands is to maintain a naval base; and that, in all common sense, is extremely necessary. He salutes the Regulations and does the best he can. It is certainly no fault of his if some antediluvian chapter in the book limits his service to eighteen months and orders him to sea duty or paper work or rolling hoops. Orders is orders, and tomorrow he’ll be saluting the next man that comes along to hang his cap on the official hat-rack. It’s the same all down the line. The Governor is just getting the swing of his job, then he’s off; the Chief Medical Officer is just beginning to organize his theories of native diseases—then good-by. In the schools there’s a continual change of teachers, hence a general sloppiness of instruction. The impermanence affects the enlisted man, often not unpleasantly. He chooses a temporary mate, raises a few children, and when the time comes to sail back to the States he hands his family over to some newly arrived buddy. Pago Pago is full of wistful college widows, scanning the sea with dreamy Samoan eyes and wondering what the next ship will bring.

A great many of our “administered” natives, I found, were enlisted in the Marines with the same pay as American boys. The results were often unfortunate. Certainly it was another move toward taking away the Samoan’s national character.

This is all on the black side of the slate,—to mix a metaphor,—the white side showed a great deal to American credit. In 1918 our Navy successfully quarantined influenza when it was almost decimating Western Samoa. But I must remind you that only one ship arrived in our Samoa during that year, whereas the New Zealanders’ group had the job of overhauling vessels from all the Seven Seas. However, our work was thorough and promptly quelled the scourge.

It was remarkable to me how well the Navy’s medicos carried on, in spite of handicaps. The newcomer would pick up his predecessor’s unfinished business, work it out in his own way, and hand the job over to the next one. Of the twelve thousand inhabitants whom he was there to supervise he would find twelve thousand spoiled by coddling on the one hand, unexplained discipline on the other. We had been pursuing the American way, serving them large doses of democracy overnight, forgetting that democracy to the aristocratic Samoan is like raw whisky to a newborn babe. From the chiefs down to the humblest kanakas a “Hello, buddy” attitude was all too general. Nobody could tell the natives anything. False prosperity had come with the Navy’s colossal expenditures, and among a people to whom a handful of pennies had once meant fortune this easy money was demoralizing. The native official and the native houseworker clamored for higher pay and shorter hours. The “gimme” habit was an ubiquitous nuisance.

Four Chief Medical Officers, coming and going, had developed some good teamwork. The first of the four had very sensibly framed a policy he could hand on to the next one, and the results were good. The indifference of the people was always a stumbling block. It was up to the Navy to install a decent latrine system, and no native would lend a helping hand. They expected everything to be done for them—and it was.

I admired the field and hospital work of the chief pharmacists’ mates and the petty officers under them. Most of them were university graduates, technicians in dentistry, entomology, pathology, bacteriology, X-ray and all the other necessaries. Watching their performance, you had to bulge your chest and say, “That’s a Navy job. No American parents could ask a better training for their sons.”

One superior of these medical gobs had had rather a crude way of distributing benefits. If natives didn’t show up for treatment they were hauled out and given the get-well-damn-you orders. In case an inhabitant refused to be hauled out, lusty police came and hauled him properly. Education by force stopped a general yaws infection, which was good. But it dampened Samoan confidence in America’s kindly rule, which was bad.

There was an organized body of trained Samoan nurses; the regulation pay was fifteen dollars a month, increased by a monthly dollar for each year’s service. Good pay, but the tendency was to get married and go home. This wasn’t at all bad, since it brought new blood into the work, and those who retired formed an alumnae body and became health missionaries in their villages. Their training was excellent and included the all-important items, baby feeding and dietetics.

An acute conjunctivitis generally called “Samoan eye” was prevalent in both groups. One school of thought still maintains that it is a form of trachoma. When you say “Fa’a Samoa” down there you are saying “Samoan fashion,” and that style of treating the eyes isn’t so good. When natives go blind, as so many do, it is usually due to their inherited witch-doctoring. They use a Fa’a Samoa treatment, which consists in scrubbing the eyes with coco fiber soaked in salt water. After a good course of this the entire eyeball is destroyed. It was encouraging to see how the chief pharmacists’ mates, who ranked as District Officers, were going at the problem. Every newborn baby got its drop of argyrol, and school children had their daily treatment. Adults were harder to handle; they were apt to wander away and try Fa’a Samoa, then come back stone-blind.

Fa’a Samoa for deafness was another medical annoyance. It consisted in tucking small shells into the afflicted ear and, in most cases, destroying the drum. Commander Paul Crosby, then Senior Medical Officer, deserves high praise for his supervision of eye and ear cases, and for the improvement all around in native health.

******

The Mau was shorter in American Samoa than on the other side, but it came to the Naval Administration before it reached New Zealand’s mandate. Part of our Mau was a sad story, and promptly hushed-up for the good of the Service. Trouble started among half-castes and traders. Then it was known that some of the Naval staff were in the conspiracy. Zealots even confined Governor Terhune in his house. I knew Terhune back in the days when I practised in Mexico, and remembered him as an upright officer and a square-shooter. But a Board of Inquiry came sailing down to Pago and would have called Terhune to account for something or other, if he had been alive. Over his dead body he was absolved of all blame. The guilty officer was punished; and I hope that tardy justice cleansed the memory of poor Terhune, who had decided to die like an officer and a gentleman.

But it was a curious finish for the ruler of what one colonial news lady headlined “A Kindly Despotism,” commenting on the Governor who happened to be in office, “With astonishing disregard of American constitutional principles he combines in his person executive, legislative and judicial authority.” The lady otherwise flattered our Naval Administration, and made allowances for the difficulties it had overcome. I make allowances too. It’s a bitter thing to be responsible for the work of colonial empire.

Along Miss Sadie Thompson’s haunted beach I was reassured by a fringe of modern privies, built firmly. Tourists might have been offended by this, but to me it was far more beautiful than if the beach had been left to pure romance and soil pollution, which have combined to destroy so many tribes.

I was glad to scribble in my notes:—

Medical conditions excellent—have never seen schools so clean as at Ofu and Olosenga under Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Campbell. Ta’u under Harris far better than the average, but not so good as Campbell’s work. Little or no ringworm and no conjunctivitis among 300 school children. Campbell and Harris had reached independent conclusion that eye manifestations in Samoa can be controlled by argyrol, therefore no trachoma. Teachers instill drops daily in children’s eyes. Scars on lids and cataracts are due to native treatment....

And to go on:

Mrs. Harris told about The Sanctified in L.M.S. mission here. If you’re Sanctified it means you’ve led a pure life, so you’re socially exalted and allowed to wear a hat to church. You’re not in the Club unless you keep up your dues, $1.50 every six months. Before communion The Sanctified meet and confess, to find out if they’re still fit members. The ones who admit that their morals have slipped during the month are fined twenty-five cents, which entitles them to be re-sanctified and take communion. Mrs. Harris tells of her servant who had been wrestling with her soul. Question: Should she blow $1.50 to get herself sanctified, or save her money and have fun? Finally she decided to have fun.

These two Samoas, because the population was so small, were like handy laboratories for the study of racial breeding, its decline and its rise. They offered such opportunities for new knowledge on the subject of one all-important disease—filariasis and resultant elephantiasis—that I suggested to the International Health Board a special study there, as the debility caused by filarial fever was cutting into labor efficiency all over the Pacific. Commander Phelps, an extraordinarily able physician, found that in Samoa the daytime microfilariae did not differ from the night variety. Dr. Buxton of the London School of Tropical Medicine thought the Aedes variagatus the principal offender. No satisfactory cure has been found, but Commander Phelps experimented with intramuscular injections of chenopodium, and with good results. These were much the same as the ones I gave the six cannibals down in New Guinea, with a decided effect on whipworms.

The roundworm question was an important one in Samoa, and always had been. An early observer, nearly a hundred years ago, remarked that the natives were infested with “lumbrici.” In my time the Governor himself vomited one up, much to the sailor’s delight. Strangely enough, hookworm was scarce; moisture, heat and soil pollution invited the pest, which did not seem to respond. In spite of Pago Pago’s handsome fringe of waterside latrines, the building of them was a problem among the islands. If they were made of wood, fierce winds blew them down. Concrete was fairly expensive. Lieutenant Commander P. J. Halloran came across with the best idea yet for tropical arrangements, and although the humorists called them “Halloran’s Privies,” many were set up and proved entirely satisfactory. A unit cost $400 and would accommodate ten, five on a side. Molded in quantity—for they were practically all concrete—they would cost about $250 per unit, built over a concrete trough with an automatic flushing system. I lack space to go into detail, but to tropical administrators of public health this plan ought to be a boon.

The Navy was going at the job in its own way, and in many regards was extremely thorough. In the hospitals it even made blood tests to determine Samoa’s racial origin. Hawaiians, as blood-examination has found, are in Group A, the world’s largest racial stock, the Caucasian or Caucasoid. But some of the Pacific blacks are also heavy in “A.” The aborigines are usually in Group O, as witness the American Indian. But blood donors in the hospital at Pago Pago revealed such a predominance of Group O that, from that angle at least, it would prove that the Polynesians are of a mixed stock.

Mixed in blood or mixed in ideals, I still have faith in the Polynesian’s ability to survive against a civilization that has been thrust upon him. To our credit, the native population of American Samoa has about doubled since we took command. In 1900 it was 5,679, and in less than forty years it had risen to 11,638. America’s experiment is restoring health to our Polynesians. In doing so, I hope we have not lost them their way of living, which was a very good way indeed.

Although quite unfortified, American Samoa, centering in Pago Pago, is a powerful link in that chain of steel we are drawing across the Pacific. And what if an aggressor should happen to want it? Well, it’s one of the great fueling stations, and oil is the food of war nowadays.