Meanwhile the children were howling some island French word that sounded like “Poison,” or maybe “Boisson,” but obviously referred to booze. Their college cheer, “Me want Boisson,” was pointed-up by one big voice in the bedlam: “Suppose you no pay me my five pounds wages along grog—me want Boisson!” And the Margots were loudly protesting that they had never heard of such a thing. Neighbors ought to be ashamed to give grog to those poor boys.
We left in the midst of the embarrassing scene; left Margot to unbolt a side door and begin serving the customers. I let out a vulgar American horse-laugh. How furious the Margots must have been at Peletier for taking me there on Sunday! Peletier drove moodily away and tried to continue the argument about natives wanting kerosene and tobacco. When I asked him if I looked like a jackass he changed his tune. You had to sell grog, he said, if you wanted to keep anybody on your plantation. Even the British did it on the sly.
M. Margot’s side-door trade was mild compared to what I saw on another island. Saturday night again. Nude figures were dancing around a fire. In the center of the group was a fat Frenchman, naked except for a grass skirt. He was leading them all, contorting and howling. The ground was strewn with empty bottles. I asked the man with me if this fellow had “gone native.” “Oh, no,” he said, “he is the owner of a big plantation. But he prefers to dance with the people. It keeps them contented.”
In going among the islands we would come occasionally upon scenes of well-being that raised our hopes for the future. Even now I stroke my waistcoat, remembering the large hospitality of F. J. Fleming’s plantation at Bushman’s Bay. Here was a New Zealander who had succeeded against all odds. His acres were lush with luxury. Blooded cattle grazed in his fields, his yards were filled with fancy ducks, turkeys, chickens and guineas. One native boy was devoted to a single job—supplying Matevan Plantation with fish. Dinner at Mr. Fleming’s table was something I often remembered on hard cross-island hikes. It was here that I made the tetrachlorethylene experiments, for in spite of the plantation’s prosperity there was much disease.
Mr. Fleming dwelt in the Land of Canaan and knew all the ropes. He kept his plantation clean with blooded Herefords which multiplied so rapidly that there was a surplus over the needs of his menage and his labor quarters. Once a week he had a young bullock slaughtered, and he knew how to keep the meat tender and wholesome. The only provisions he had to buy were tea, sugar, wine and flour. Matevan baked its bread in its own ovens, and was not bothered by labor shortage, because the good eating was famous among the natives. This project flourished on dangerous Malekula, a smiling picture of what the New Hebrides offered to the right man.
While Mr. Fleming fed on the fat of the land discouraged planters over the hill were starving on tinned beef.
******
This survey didn’t end with very cheerful conclusions. The New Hebrides group offered a picture of a race being murdered by European invasion. Fiji and Samoa had been invaded too, but their conquerors had set about making amends. Outside of sporadic attempts to discourage cannibalism, what had the pale-faced intruders done to improve this race whose labor they so bitterly needed?... I had worked my level best and given all the advice I had to give.
We were coming back to the New Hebrides someday, with all the medicine and all the knowledge at our command. I told that to Mr. Paton just before I left, and he was mightily pleased. I couldn’t prophesy any results, but now that I look back on our subsequent years of work down there I know that in many regions we turned the tide of health. Yet it has still not turned fast enough to restore a dying population. And if it dies, what then? Well, the Axis Powers can always pour in slaves to upset Oceania’s racial and economic balance again. I hate to think of that as a solution. But the Condominium Government as I saw it was inviting its own fall.
I didn’t dwell on doleful things when I said good-by to Mr. Paton and told him that we were coming back to cure and not to question. Before we shook hands he smiled and said, “Mr. Rockefeller has given us so much in the work you are doing for my people that I want to give him something in return.” He brought a package and when he opened it I saw a roll of tapa cloth, very old and unusual with a faded velvety texture. The markings were so faint and frail that he had to trace them out. He said, “This came from Efate over in the east where there’s quite a mixture of Polynesian. The missionaries who first touched there over a hundred years ago found the natives worshiping this cloth. Nobody knows where it came from, but there’s a myth that it was brought in a foreign canoe.” Mr. Paton rolled up the tapa and handed it to me, with a letter to John D. Rockefeller. “Just to thank him,” he said. “I don’t think there’s another tapa like it in the world.”