A Vicious Ordinance.

In 1922 an Ordinance was passed "to control certain Samoan Customs" which revive,! a German proclamation issued in 1901, and gave the Administrator power to banish from his village, without trial, any Samoan whose presence was a source of danger to the "peace, order or good government thereof," and also the right, without trial, to deprive any Samoan of the title by which he had been known to his people. This power of banishment had formerly been possessed by the Samoans themselves, and used very rarely as a means of protecting the harmony of the village or district against objectionable inhabitants, while the right to deprive any Chief or other Native authority of his title was the privilege solely of those who had conferred it on him. or had agreed to it passing to him as an hereditary right.

Under the Ordinance here set out, Samoa has since witnessed a sequence of banishments and degradations without trial of sacred and high Chiefs by a military dictator against whose cruel decrees there has been no appeal.

Supplement to the Western Samoa Gazette-Published by Authority.

No. 42. Monday, September 11. 1922.

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