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xx PREFACE
and are never out of debt, and never see their homes again.
This practice . . . might easily be abolished by a slight effort
on the part of the Government, but there is hardly any super-
vision over French plantations outside Port Vila, and in many
plantations conditions exist which are an insult to our modem
views on humane treatment. On English plantations there is
but little brutality, owing to the Government's careful supervision
of the planters and the higher social and moral standing of
the settlers in general. . . . The French by-laws permit the
delivery of alcohol to natives in the shape of ‘ medicine ’, a
stipulation which opens the door to every abuse.â€ù Speiser gives
several examples of the methods of recruiting for labour. On
p. 54 he says : " The English Government keeps a strict watch
on the recruiting, so that the professional recruiter is dying
out, and every planter has to go in search of hands for himself.
But while the English Government keeps a sharp eye on these
matters, the French Government is as lenient in this as in the
question of the sale of alcohol, so that irequent kidnapping and
manyicruelties occur in the northern part of the group, and
slavery still exists. . . . This recruiting is not only immoral
in the highest degree, but also very harmful to the race, and it
is to-day one of the principal reasons for its decay." Those
who are acquainted with the purely British Possessions in
Melanesia and New Guinea know that the natives are safeguarded
from acquiring alcohol or ï¬Åre-arms, but where the Condominium
reigns, the British trader or planter is placed in a very difficult
position when those of French nationality can break the law
with impunity, and there is no cause for surprise that British
traders and settlerslhave been known to follow the French in
supplying alcohol to natives so as to attract labourers.
Missionaries constantly and for a long time have inveighed
against these and similar abuses.
Concerning Lambumbu, Deacon writes, " The population oi
this DISTRICT is wholly un-missionized and knows only a poor
Pidgin English, a very difficult medium to work in. I know the
native language fairly well, but not well enough to work entirely
in it. I mean‘ dialect, for there is a new one about every
5 miles, to be learnt afresh. . . A great many of my notes are
taken down in native dialects and all need a lot of connecting
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