PASTELS FROM THE PACIFIC.• Me. Lustwoon's charming pastel sketehes and

his admirable prose descriptions will reawaken in many readers the longing to see those Islands of the Blest in the Western Pacific which Robert Louis Stevenson, following many less gifted writers, made part of our literary inheritance. The author's pastels give us precisely that impression of magic colour that we expected—of faint iridescent purples and the delicate green of young foliage under a clear sky, of a pure ultramarine sea, pink coral reefs, and a blaze of angry crimson in a Fijian sunrise. Few artists of repute have worked in the Pacific, except John La Farge, the American painter, and

Gauguin, the strange French genius, whose mysterious studies of the Tahiti natives have been over-praised or under-valued because they were labelled, absurdly enough, as " Post-Impressionist•." But Mr. Lenwood's sketches, for which he makes a very needless

apology, prove that the born colourist should make his fortune in the South Seas, if his island landscapes were not regarded by the public as altogether too beautiful. The remoteness of the islands from Europe and from one another is not easily realized from the little maps in the ordinary atlas. It was the first of Mr. Lenwood's impressions :— " Nine knots an hour on the John Williams brought us in a fortnight from Sydney to Rarotonga. The last few days had given us once more an impression of the size of the Pacific and of the way tiny bits of land lie scattered at the farthest ends of enormous plains of water. So small were the islands that it was amazing to a landsman how any captain could find them. From a little distance the periscope of a submarine could hardly have been more elusive, and, when the island was sighted, it seemed necessary to keep it well in view, lest, as it were, the periscope should sink and our ship be left once more alone in a waste of sea. In this ease we looked eagerly for land, and the best that we could hope for was only six miles in diameter ! At last we made it, and in an hour or two were skirting the north-east shores with our bows pointing to the anchorage at Avarua."

It is easy for the captain of a steamer to find any of these specks on the vast Pacific, but it is not always easy to anchor off a coral island except in calm weather, unless, as in some cases, there is a sheltered harbour. The hurricane of 1889 at Samoa, from which H.M.S. ' Calliope' alone escaped, was a well-known and typical instance of the dangers of South Sea navigation, which help to main- tain the isolation of the scattered little peoples. Nevertheless, the islanders in the past century and a half have gradually come into more or less close contact with Western civilization, and the import- ance of Mr. Lenwood's book lies in his sympathy with the natives, and his endeavour to understand the problems that have risen from their intercourse with Europeans.

The author's tour included in a wide sweep Lifou in the Friendly group, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, the Ellice and Gilbert groups, and Papua. He was primarily interested not in administration or trade but in the missions, and it is well to realize that in the South

Seas the missionary has been the pioneer of peace and order as well as of Christianity. In the darkest days of the last great war, the

London Missionary Society was formed, and sent its first band of teachers in 1797 to Tahiti, of the existence of which Englishmen had learned from Captain Cook. Those teachers fared ill, but by 1816 the Tahiti Christians had become powerful enough to over- come heathen intolerance. The mission solidly founded in Tahiti gradually spread its influence over the whole of the Western Pacific. John Williams, that truly great man, introduced Christianity into Samoa. Native teachers from Samoa spread the Gospel in the islands in the West, and a Samoan missionary established the first mission in New Guinea. The quiet and unobtrusive work of a few hundreds of men and women, for the most part unknown to fame, has transformed the little island communities, freed them from tribal war and cannibalism, and made them proficient in the arts of peace. The world knows little of the South Seas, and it will surprise many readers to find Mr. Len- wood seriously maintaining that the chief difficulty of the missions in Samoa arises from their success. " We "—that is, the London Missionary Society—" are the unofficial equivalent of an Estab- lished Church, and suffer many of the disadvantages of establish- ment." The Church and the community are united so closely that secular influences seemed to the author to predominate in some respects over the spiritual side. But the Samoan Church, which pays

• Pastels from the Pacific: By Frank Lenwood. London : Uumpluey lie. 63. net.(

the whole expenses of the British missionaries, and also trains many native teachers for work in Papua and elsewhere, is in many ways a model for our more worldly generation, as well as a fine example of what wisely guided missionary enterprise can accomplish :-

" Those who disapprove Christianity anywhere will not credit its reality in Samoa. To such I make no appeal. But if any be sympathetic but still unconvinced, let him go to Papua and see the Samoan missionaries working for Christ in that treacherous climate, 2,6,00 miles from their home, among savage people who seem to them as alien as to the Englishman. Many Groups in the South Seas have played a noble part through the men they have sent to Papua, but it is safe to say that for genuine religion the Samoans have come first upon the list. The Papuan Mission could never have been what it is to-day if Christianity in Samoa had not been the real thing."

The author offers some instructive remarks on the Socialism or Communism which prevails in Samoa. It makes for hospitality and good fellowship, and every one has enough to eat. But it dis- courages ability ; the Samoans would not share authority in the mission for fear lest some of their number should gain special power. Nothing is done till all agree to act, because every man is afraid of taking responsibility. Mr. Lenwood tells a comical anecdote of the Samoan teachers coming in a united deputation to a mis- sionary, to ask him to give one of them a dose of salts. Further, as all things are in common, no one is encouraged to show any initiative or display a little more energy than usual. However, the Samoans are a happy people, and, now that the Germans have been expelled from the group, it should be easy to save this kindly race from being degraded by modern commercialism. As in Tonga some years ago, so in Samoa to-day the introduction of cricket has proved an apple of discord :— " One village would go to play another, and would stay for days. The gardens were neglected, and old tribal feuds bade fair to revive. When teams got to 200 a side, and each 200 failed to keep its collect- ive temper, the German Government stepped in and prohibited cricket matches in order to prevent breaches of the peace. Under the American Government cricket must be still allowed, for when we were in Tutuila trouble arose between two villages over a cricket dispute, which threatened to end in bloodshed ! "

Mr. Lenwood speaks plainly about the indentured Indians in Fiji, whose grievances have led to the abolition of the indenture system by the Indian Government. There was no suggestion that the coolies were harshly treated as a class, or that Indians, when re- leased from their indentures, did not thrive as free landowners in Fiji. The main trouble was that the coolies were recruited from different parts of India and from different classes of the population, and that when they were assembled in Fiji they were as the peoples at the Tower of Babel, speaking so many different tongues that no one official or set of officials, even if they had Indian experience, could deal efficiently with the labourers. The men of education in this " tongueless mob " lost their self-respect. The missions could do nothing with these degraded people, who were bereft of their religion, their language, and their traditions. The presence of these outcast coolies has had a bad effect on the native Fijians, and has tended also to widen the gulf between the natives and the Euro- peans. There is a good deal to be said for Indian immigration into Fiji, where, as in Mauritius, the sugar plantations have been developed rapidly by Indian labour, but the experiment required much more careful handling than it received. In regard to the natives, however, our administration has been on the whole success- ful, because we have consistently respected the natives' rights over the land. Mr. Lenwood pays a special tribute to the Colonial Office management of the Gilbert group, which " is directed and inspired by a belief in the Gilbertese native and a desire to give him the best chance possible." Phosphate deposits are being worked on Ocean Island in this group, but trade interests are brought into harmony with the welfare of the natives, in accordance with sound British tradition. One curious difficulty has arisen out of the rivalry of the Protestant and Roman Catholic missions in the Gil- berts ; the Government has to choose its village officials from among the minority who are still heathen.

To Papua, or South-Eastern New Guinea, which is a colony of the Commonwealth of Australia, Mr. Lenwood devotes several chapters of great interest. Papua is about as large as Great Britain, but its population does not exceed four hundred thousand, and is probably much smaller. The Papuans are a medley of many races and species. An expert, reporting to the Bible Society some years ago, declared that twenty-seven definite languages were spoken in Papua, to say nothing of many dialects. In thirteen mission dis- tricts, the missionaries have to deal with eleven languages, each spoken by from ten to twenty thousand people. The language diffi- culty is not merely troublesome for officials, missionaries, and traders, but also impedes the disappearance of the village and tribal feuds for which Papua enjoys an evil notoriety. However, even Papua is improving, and in his long journey of seven hundred miles along its coast, from the swamps of the great Fly River estuary to Port Moresby and the healthier country beyond, the author had no trouble of any kind with the natives. British mis- sionaries and the many devoted teachers from Samoa and other South Sea islands are gradually civilizing the Papuan. His primitive

disregard for the sanctity of human life, whether his own or another's, has its comic side. Mr. Lenwood gives, on Judge Murray's authority, the following instance :— " A man having murdered a woman, the Governor asked why he chose a woman rather than a man ? The warrior leaned con- fidentially towards him and explained, ` Two things : one, woman he not run so quick ; two, woman ho not carry spear.' " And, after showing that the village blood-feuds have something in common with the rivalries of English county cricket, he goes on :-

" To show how loose is their hold on life, could you find anything better than the pathetic story (for which I do not vouch, as I cannot verify it) of two murderers, who were under the loose confinement usual in a Papuan gaol ? At the hour of their execution everybody was ready but the victims, and, though prisoners rarely take to flight, everybody assumed that these two men had run away. But they turned up half an hour late, hot and panting, and apologized profusely because they had kept the officers waiting ! If the Government wished to kill them,' they seemed to say, it was the Government's way of paying back, and they were willing to be sacrificed.' It is good to think that the death sentence is very rarely given for murder among such a people."

The author confesses to a genuine liking for these simple people, bloodthirsty as they may appear to be, and he urges the Common- wealth Government to see that the natives are protected against the short-sighted greed of so me settlers. If the Papuans were en- couraged to produce copra on their own account, as the Gold Coast negroes produce cocoa, a great native industry, Mr. Lenwood thinks, might spring up. But he is adverse to the mission planta- tion, useful though it may be as a model for the natives. The less missionaries have to do with trade, he thinks, the better it will be for the mission. We have touched on only a few points in this fascinating and suggestive book. The moral of it all is, in essence, the moral of the cause for which we are fighting. We have gained our great influence in the South Seas, not by conquest or by com- mercial exploitation, but by fair dealing, and by treating the natives as free human beings with rights that must be respected. In maintaining these ideals the missionaries have done a great and noble work. But they would not have been so successful had they not been supported throughout by British public opinion, whioh is never deaf to appeals for freedom and justice, whether in the South Seas or in Belgium and Serbia.