Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/256

206 mere farce. It is not to be; it never will or can be. The mere contact with the white man is the beginning of their degradation and ultimate extinction. The natives of the Interior will likely survive the longest, and those of the Admiralty Group of forty islands seem to be a hardier and more virile race; but already, since the European occupation, on many of the islands less than a hundred survive out of thousands. Ere it is too late it is to be hoped that ethnologists will make thorough studies of the survivors, and all their customs, ways, and beliefs be noted down.

[I have discussed this Papuan subject with Miss Pullen-Burry, who is greatly interested in anthropology, and who has written on these matters, and what this clever lady and many others have noted ought to be carefully preserved. I remember once when I was a guest of this lady at a “travel dinner” in a London club where she occupied the chair and made an excellent and witty speech, she announced that she thought the best employment for a ladies’ club was “the study of man”!]

We discuss these questions concerning the origin and the ultimate fate of the natives here, but never come to any satisfactory conclusion. The “ferocious savages” are, after all, doing what we all would do—fighting for their very existence. No wonder they massacre, when they can, the people who would snatch it from them, and who have seized upon their land. Yet, right or wrong, the white man has to be master; we know that. As to making Christians of them, it is ridiculous; they may profess to be, but they never really understand and never will; there is nothing to make them understand. They see the so-called Christians, the Protestants and Catholics, jealous of and hating each other, unable to work together