In common with many another British colony, the safeguard of
Papua lies not in the rifles of the whites, but in the loyal
hearts of the natives themselves, and in Papua, as in Fiji, the
native constabulary under the leadership of a mere handful of
Europeans may be trusted to maintain order in any emergency. As
Governor Murray truly states in his interesting book "Papua, or
British New Guinea," the most valuable asset the colony
possesses is not its all but unexplored mineral wealth or the
potential value of its splendid forests and rich soil, but it
is the Papuans themselves, and let us add that under the
leadership of the high-minded, self-sacrificing and
well-trained civil servants of Great Britain the dawn of Papuan
civilization is fast breaking into the sunlight of a happiness
such as has come to but few of the erstwhile savage races of
the earth.

Without belittling the nobility of purpose or disregarding the
self-sacrificing devotion of the missionary for his task, let
us also grant to the civil servant his due share of praise. His
duty he also performs in the dangerous wilds of the earth;
beset with insidious disease, stifling in unending heat, exiled
from home and friends, with suspicious savages around him, he
labors with waning strength in that struggle against climate
wherein the ultimate ruin of his body is assured. Yet in his
heart there lives, growing as years elapse, the English
gentleman's ideal of service, and for him it is sufficient
that, though he is to be invalided and forgotten even before he
dies, yet his will have been one of those rare spirits who have
extended to the outer world his mother country's ideal of