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.