TERRITORIES: U. S. Dominion?

Lofty, lovely and fertile are the valleys of the Samoa Islands, which lie in the South Pacific more than halfway from Hawaii to New Zealand, in the latitude of Australia’s northernmost tip. Some of the islands, including Upolu (on which Robert Louis Stevenson died), were once a German, have been since the War a New Zealand mandate. The eastern group—Tutuila, Aunuu, Ofu, Olosega, Tau and Rose—belong to the U. S. by an Anglo-German treaty of 1900. And in 1925 the U. S. annexed tiny Swain’s Island. Total U. S. Samoa comprises 60 sq. mi., 8,763 population. It is valuable for a rich output of copra, also for Tutuila’s beautiful harbor Pago Pago (pronounced “pango-pango”), good naval station.

The U. S. Samoans, pure Polynesians of the highest type, no heathens,* since 1900 have been politically suspended in air. The U. S. governs them through its Navy representative at Pago Pago, now Captain Gatewood Sanders Lincoln, who proclaims the laws with the approval of a native parliament. Thus if the inhabitants are citizens of anything it is the Navy, not the U. S. By Federal law they are established neither as subjects of, nor as aliens to, the U. S. Long have they wished it were otherwise. But puzzled Congressmen, unfamiliar with these tiny dots on maps of the Pacific, have not known what to do about the Samoans’ petitions for a change.

Last week, however, a commission of Congressmen headed by Connecticut’s Senator Hiram Bingham, chairman of the Territories & Insular Affairs Committee, were aboard the 7,05O-ton cruiser Omaha en route from Honolulu to Pago Pago to consider at first hand the conflicting petitions and reports which Congress has received. While at Honolulu they had held sessions, heard much testimony from Samoans and others.

Some witnesses advised making Samoa a part of Hawaii Territory, others violently opposed this. Most witnesses agreed with a letter to the commission from a committee of Samoan chiefs which declaimed: “Navy rule must cease!” Student Nelson Samoa Tuiteleleapaga of the University of Hawaii described how Navy officers permitted sailors to marry Samoan girls, then to leave them behind on sailing away. Few agreed with that part of the chief’s letter which read: “A million and a half dollars must be appropriated for the establishment of the Samoan government. The education of the Samoan people is sufficient to enable them to handle their own affairs.”

Victor Steuart Kaleoaloha Houston, Hawaii’s (voteless) delegate to Congress, said: “American Samoa cannot be made into a State. It cannot be made into an incorporated Territory, as it is impractical to apply many Federal laws there. A special form of government, such as DoDominion status, would be necessary.”

—Converted chiefly to the Mormon. Methodist. Congregational & Roman Catholic faiths.