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.

CHAPTER V

PIG ARISTOCRACY

The Adventist pastor who had only two converts led me into a dark, gnarled jungle. With every step I was forced to remember that this was not Samoa with its kindly government and courteous natives. We were on one of the blackest spots in the New Hebrides, and right across the stream was wild Malekula where the Big Nambas had added liquor and firearms to the ancient art of man-eating. “This way, please,” whispered the Pastor, as if it were a prayer meeting. Ahead of us broke a light from many torches, moving ceremoniously around a great square.