National Affairs: King John Proposes

Of all the myriad islands in the mid-Pacific, few have had a more colorful history than little Kusaie, a six-by nine-mile dot in the Carolines. Americans were the first white men there, in 1806. Brutal, roisterous, buccaneering crews of U.S. whaling ships turned the gentle natives into fierce killers. For years Kusaie was an island of savagery.

Then, about 85 years ago, a few Americans set out to right the wrongs which a few Americans had done. Missionaries of a Boston society taught and toiled with the resentful, disease-ridden, impoverished Micronesians. Kusaie became a tropic paradise. It had no poverty...