AMERICAN FLEET.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2172, 23 April 1908, Page 2

AMERICAN FLEET.

MAORI DEMONSTRATIONS AT AUCKLAND. A QUESTION OF MORALITY. (Press Association.) AUCKLAND, April 22. So many suggestions have been made as to -how best the visitors by the American fleet next August may be entertained, that a press representative -had a- few woids with a leadiug Maori chief this morning as to the possibility of there being a combined demonstration.

He said : “The Maori is constantly told that he is a useless member of society; that- he does nothing' with his land, and makes no effort towards his own betterment, -and yet people want him to gather to make a display just at the worst time of the year for -him to be away from his land. If lie is to better liimself -lie must be at home and at work on bis land about August. There is another thing to which I should like to make reference now. It is a great- pity that Rotorua should always be mentioned in support of the view that any national gathering together of the Maoris tends to -the sapping of moral fibre. Whatever may be said regarding the poi and other dances, at Rotorua, it is now recognised, so far as the Maori is concerned, to he one of tho most morally clean centres iu the North Island. I claim that even if such- were not the case, the blame would rest more with tho pakeha than with the Maori. You may smile, but from what I have seen in your great city of Auckland on the occasion of tho visit of several warships, I can assure you that -there is more justification there for any -remarks on the score of virtue than at Rotorua. There is also another matter to which I would like to refer. I sec that some of the writers object to a bio Maori gathering because’of the deaths tliat took place when we all assembled at Rotorua to see Queen Victoria’s grandson. Now, I wish to explain that some of those deaths were old men, who should not have gone to the meeting at all. We told them that they might die if they went. They replied, ‘lt is the only chance we’ll ever have of seeing the grandson of our White Mother, and wo will go to see him, and having seen him, will die if die we must for going there.’ My people were proud to gather together in large numbers to meet the grandson of our great 'Mute Mother, but that is a very different thing to gathering for -the purpose of making a show for the fleet which does not belong t 0 our own. Empire.”