It was January, 1927, when Montague retailed the bad news, and I gave myself a few days to worry. Then I went over to his office and asked, “What about it?” He said, “Lambert, you know Pomare, and I don’t. You’ve worked with him, he likes you and he’ll probably respect whatever you have to say.” I had already thought over what Montague proposed next. “Why don’t you take the boat for New Zealand, see Pomare and try to talk him over? It won’t be easy, but I can’t see any other way.”
In about two weeks I was in Wellington, where I went straight to Pomare’s office in the Government Building. I hadn’t announced my coming, and when I reached his desk I saw his look of friendly surprise. (I made the mental note, “At least he’s smiling.”) Well, he said, he didn’t know I was in New Zealand; and what had brought me there at this time of year? I said “I have come down to get better acquainted with you. The last time I was here it was so cold that I went to Auckland to write my Cook Island Report. Now I just want to visit.” Impulse was urging me to bring up the subject which I knew was foremost in both our minds. But it would be fatal to seem too eager. Our conversation drifted into impersonal channels; Dominion politics, welfare work among the children, native health problems—a little of everything except what had brought me there.
I wasn’t going to play the first card. Then gracefully, as if there had never been the slightest difference between him and the High Commission, he asked me how the School was progressing. This was my opening. I eased into the subject, as though he had never heard of it before. He listened for an hour, interrupting occasionally to make his own comments. In every detail this great Maori showed the same grasp of essential points that he displayed on a later visit to Fiji when we gave him the honors of a chief and Eloisa cooked her best dinner; Montague was there, a superb physician himself, and was convinced at last that a Maori could excel. He was even more convinced when we took Pomare over to Mokogai and landed him, in state, at the same spot where a whippersnapper had once said, “Colored people this way.”
... After that hour with Pomare in his Wellington office the difference was surprisingly smoothed out. He was cordial, beaming. Why, of course the Cook Islands would be in on the Medical School. Of course well-trained Native Practitioners would be the only solution. Of course the Cooks were in.
When I left his office, dazed by this splendid turn of luck, I could not restrain a chuckle. Had Pomare ever intended to hold aloof? Hadn’t he withdrawn from the High Commission scheme merely as a demonstration, to show the Pakeha that he could not insult a Maori without the danger of reprisals? He had shown them that he held the power, and that he could use it. Then with a magnanimous gesture he gave them what they asked for.
Out on a Wellington street I mopped my brow and tried to realize that we had crossed the last bridge. The hard pull of four years was over. I was going to have my School. Now ground-breaking would begin in earnest. Now we could send all over the Pacific, bring in eligible native boys and teach them what modern medicine really means.
CHAPTER VII
HALF A LOAF AND A SLICE OFF
I should be sloppily sentimental and call the scene which is to follow “My Dream Come True.” The dream had backed in a little crookedly, knocking over a few ideals and dumping at my feet a short measure of fine gold. But who was I to complain? Something substantial had materialized out of six hard years of constant hammering for results. I think I was excited, for I could scarcely follow the earnest, dedicatory voice that rang through the new lecture hall, fragrant with fresh paint and plaster.
That was the morning of December 29, 1928. I sat on the platform with bigwigs of the Colony: Sir Maynard Hedstrom, U. S. Consul Roberts, the Secretary of Native Affairs, the Colonial Secretary and sundry others. His Excellency Sir Eyre Hutson, Governor General of the High Commission, was making a speech.