DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. Ill, No. 34. OCTOBER 1922. 



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DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

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Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., Rothersthorpe, 

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

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Editorial Notes 



We have long passed those days \\hen a famous 

 missionary wrote the lines : 



" Though e\-erj- prospect pleases 

 And only man is vile." 



True, one meets people from time to time who call 

 all races, whose skin pigmentation is darker than that 

 of the European, by the name of " niggers," and who 

 cannot understand any point of view concerning them 

 except that of regarding them as so much potential 

 labour to benefit the white man. But such persons 

 are fading away into a minority, and white civilisation 

 as a whole has for a long period endeavotired to apply 

 to the particular subject races under its control an 

 attitude not merely of tolerance, but of understanding 

 and sympathy both in thought and action. 



In two notable instances, indeed, within the British 

 Empire, special attempts have been made to preserve 

 the original native races. A careful segregation of the 

 Red Indians has been adopted in Canada, while in 

 .\ustralia the aborigine has been allotted a sanctuary 

 consisting of 65,700 square miles on the borders of 

 South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern 



Territory. 



* * sie ^ * 



We have, however, to face a most unpleasant fact, 

 and that is the decadence which sets in amongst the 



253 



majority of primitive or semi-primitive races after the 

 white man has come into their midst. Moreover, 

 amongst tropical peoples the arrival of white civilisa- 

 tion results not only in moral and physical decadence, 

 but in depopulation on an extensive scale. Recently 

 two important books have appeared on this subject, 

 and we feel that it will not be out of place here to 

 summarise the information and conclusions which they 

 offer. The first book is a collection of papers by 

 rioctors, missionaries, and Government officials on 

 depopulation amongst the Melanesian inhabitants of 

 the Western Pacific archipelagoes, edited by a famous 

 Cambridge psychologist, who made personal investiga- 

 tions on the spot.i The second is the account, by a 

 well-known Alsatian theologian and doctor, of his four 

 and a half years' experiences as a medical missionary 

 amongst the natives of the Ogowe district, which lies 

 between the mountains of Central Africa and the 

 Gulf of Guinea. - 



sK :}: * * * 



It must be admitted that the evidence in the first 

 book is rather conflicting, though the evils which 

 European contact with the natives of Melanesia has 

 produced are undeniable and may be roughly sum- 

 marised as follows : depopulation and physical de- 

 cadence have chiefly resulted from (a) the introduction 

 of Western diseases, particularly of venereal diseases ; 

 (b\ the sale of alcohol and opium ; [c) the wearing of 

 clothes ; (d) the recruiting of labour which takes men 

 and women away from their islands to other islands. 

 With regard to the last two causes. In many islands, 

 before the arrival of the white man, no clothes at all 

 were worn ; in others, the men wore loin-cloths and 

 the women small skirts. Such clothing was amply 

 sufficient, and it is amply sufficient now. Both 

 traders and missionaries have been responsible for 

 the introduction and encouragement of clothes, though 

 too much blame has, perhaps, been attached to the 



' Essays on the Depopulation of Melanesia. Edited by 

 \V. H. R. Rivers. M.D., F.R.S. (Cambridge University Press, 

 6s.) 



" On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. By Prof. Albert 

 Scliweitzer. Translated by Ch. Th. Campion. (A. and C. 

 Black, Ltd., 6s.) 



