ARE THEY WORTHY?

Hokitika Guardian, 13 October 1927, Page 1

ARE THEY WORTHY?

Very likely the high panjandrums of the football hierarchy believe that if .Maoris pure or diluted go to South Africa to play football Slim Piet will draw the colour line as he is said to have clone with our brown fellow citizens before. Yet you know our Maori brother has gained the respect of every kind of Africander, for lie put up a notable case for himself in the South African War and was tho equal in everv sense of . bis ligliter-colouied soldier. There is rather a good instance of a Maori gentleman of rangatira origin being taken prisoner. The capturing Dutchmen drew the colour line, and, not thinking that a sunburnt man of another race could possess initiative, let hint wander round spare on the evening after a very wicked and very willing action in which seventeen New Zealanders were captured. With William the Maori, the Dutchmen had captured a Cape cart containing the colonel’s private papers and gear, as well as a large mail from New Zealand. William, wandering about spare in the night, and twenty-five miles away from his regiment, hooked the mules in the captured cart , and in darkness and unknown country thread-

ed hi-, way by vki and spruit, kropje. krantz and Piet's wntchposts all that dreary night. As morning dawned. Slim Piet observed William’s turnout heading for tho rooibntje’s lines, ami peppered him until the Cape cart looked like a disreputable salt shaker. "William merely speeded up his team and arrived in the lines with the laconic remark: ■■ I've brought the mails!” There is nothing William could have brought, barring, skoff, clop, beer, rum and victory more welcome than letters from home. Bill has long since become respectable and has a large waistcoat and a family. He is but one of many Maoris who both in Africa and in Gallipoli became entitk to play in any kind of game there is. including the aristocratic New Zealand national pastime of handball. —Auckland Star.