Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/303

Rh of the fourteenth century or the plague in London in the time of Charles II. resulted in any permanent physical deterioration of the races they affected. The Fijians may be a vanishing people, but in physical appearance they remain superior as of old, and their superb stature and mental attainments appear not to have declined even though the race as a whole be dying.

There is, however, one cardinal evil in the Fijian situation and that is the severe strain of child-raising which falls upon the women in a country wherein the proper food for the maintenance of lactation has not yet been produced in sufficient quantity. The children, being thus in a peculiar sense dependent upon their mothers, will be profoundly affected by any conditions which produce injury to the women of the tribe.

Yaws, dysentery and whooping cough are now primary causes of the decline of population. Among minor causes the committee mentions the abolition of polygamy; for under monogamy the mother must not only tend her child, but gather the food and cultivate the soil, whereas in polygamous days these latter duties were taken over by the other wives during the early period of the infant's life.

The report makes it clear that the decline is due chiefly to the high death rate of children, and also that we must proceed very slowly and sympathetically, using as little force as possible, in the introduction of civilization. The old socialism must gradually be replaced by a certain measure of individualism, and the warrior's ambitions must give place to those of the craftsman. Hygiene as a subject of primary importance must be taught not only in the schools, but chiefly by example, upon the plan of the college settlement, by teachers living in so far as possible as the natives themselves now live, thus slowly changing the habits of life of those around them, and indeed these teachers should themselves be natives of the most enlightened type, and maintained in government employ.

A most interesting sociological experiment has been conducted by the British in their government of the Fijians. It is one of the very few instances wherein altruism is the key-note in the rule of the strong over the weak, and its maintenance through all these years in the face of much discouragement and expense is an honor to Great Britain, in the pride of which all the world may share—it is a rare triumph of idealism over selfishness.

As Mr. Allardyce, then colonial secretary, said to me:

Indeed, if the South Sea Islanders are now to be saved new interests and new arts must be developed by them, and new ambitions other than the withered remnants of the old must be created. Industrial schools