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The TRUTH about SAMOA

The Europeans Cease Activities

The Europeans Cease Activities.

Following this inflammatory fiasco with the deputation from the Citizens' Committee, the Minister informed us two days later that he had telegraphed the Prime Minister, and that the Samoa Immigration Order was being amended so that British subjects and Samoa-born Europeans could be deported without trial. We were ordered by Mr. Nosworthy to cease forthwith our activities with the Natives and undo the harm caused. We protested strongly to both Mr. Nosworthy and General Richardson against the suggestion that we were disloyal and seditious agitators, and asked for specific instances or detailed charges, but those have never yet been given to me or my colleagues, nor to the Parliamentary Committee on the Samoan Petition, or the Royal Commission on Samoa. To the general charge of disloyalty and sedition we have given emphatic denials on oath, from the platform, and in the press. Yet they have been persisted with by those responsible for the Government propaganda in order to inflame public opinion against us. and every demand we have made for the stating of one single instance of such conduct has remained unanswered through the many months which have elapsed.

On receipt of the Minister's threat of the 13th June, 1927, to deport the European members of the Committee, and his instruction to cease all activities among the Native people, we at once saw the leaders of the Native Committee and advised them of the situation. We urged them to disperse peacefully to their homes, obey all the laws and every authority set over them, and seek to remedy their grievances by none other than constitutional and peaceful means. The Administrator was at once notified that we had clone our utmost to carry out the Minister's request, and had gone to page 19 some pains and expense to assist in the return to their districts of the large gathering of Natives who had assembled at Apia for the Minister's 'malaga' and fono. From that time to the present the European members of the Committee have taken no part directly or indirectly in the activities of the Mau, which has gone its own way, and the movement might have developed on very different lines had not the Europeans who possessed the confidence of the Samoans been forbidden to meet them and act as a much-needed influence towards caution.