The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 27, 1912. TRUSTEES FOR POSTERITY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1062, 27 June 1912, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, June 27, 1912. TRUSTEES FOR POSTERITY.

Thk Right Hou. James Bryce, the distinguished English statesman, who is at present engaged in the pleasant pastime of patting New Zealand on the back, mentioned in one of his excellent orations that we ate “trustees for posterity-” We are. He turther remarked, in highly complimentary terms, on the extraordiug amity that existed between the native race and the pakeha, mentioning that in no other country where a native race had been subdued were the conditions so favourable to the native people. If one may be permitted to be absolutely trank, one might remark that the treatment of the native race in New Zealand is almost criminal. It is too true that he possesses most of the advantages of the pakeha without the burdens, that he sutlers no real poverty and is received more or less as an equal of the white man. On the other hand he is an uncontrolled menace to himself and for one reason only, lie does not work. We speak of the mass, not the individual. We have in the Mauawatu a number of Maori citizens, who are in every respect the'equal of their pakeha neighbours in ability and in activity. In Mauawatu aud elsewhere however, the Maori generally is being allowed to rust to death. We read that the Territorial authorities have found absolutely no opposition to the compulsion of military service. But we find nowhere any law compelling Maoris to save their lives by work. Every person who has addressed himself to the question of the bodily salvation ot the Maori, has time after time pointed out that the Maori’s only physical salvation lies in work. ‘ At the present time the Maori is more idle than he has ever been in the pakeha history of New Zealand. He is allowed to be a handicap to settlement and when he is ridding himself of his estates —aud there is much transfer ot Maori laud going on —he is simply doing so to indulge in motor cars and other luxuries of life. Except that he is luxuriously imitative of the white man, (who works hard in order that he may luxuriate.) he is allowed to be the unhygienic savage he has always been, the difference now being that he cannot engage in the savage exercises and activities that were natural to him and which kept him fit and well in earlier days. With few exceptions Maori villages and camps are abominations. There are feeble attempts being made to bring the disgust-

ing state of affairs to light, but few attempts to rectify them by stern coercive measures. The pakeha should be the master as well as the frieud of the Maori. It is execrable that a Maori tohuuga should be permitted to kill over a dozen people by bis “cures” before he is laid by the heels and sent to gaol for merely a short term. It is horrible that uncovered coffins containing bodies that have died of infectious diseases and pulmonary complaints, should be allowed to remain uncovered in the vicinity of villages aud it is unexcusable that the drinking habits of men and women Maoris are not persistently fought. If we are trustees for posterity, we deserve punishment lor dishonesty. The whole administration ot Maori affairs —villages, laud laws, social regulations—is lecble and lutile. Although alleged philanthropists aud who are able to put a linger on the weak spots, uo collective effort is made to enforce obedience to modern laws ol health and hygiene. While the white man is striving to curtail the hours of his ovvu work and to getting more money aud more luxury out of occupations, it is natural enough that our imitative brown frieuds should crawl through life iu a kind ot physical aud mental stupor. In reality it would be better for the Maori race if the natives owned uo land, or at least so little that it became necessary for their sustenance that they should toil all day aud everyday from chief to the commonest brown brother. There is nothing more certain than that the Maori is decaying. The alleged ract that the Maori is increasing slightly is not hopeful even il true. The Maori youngster is prone to all kinds of complaints. He dies in heaps aud is allowed to die aud the survivors who idle their lives away ire of uo earthly service either to he race or to the country, it is iossible to reproduce the old

i ' ’voder which the Maori ti. maiued virile and intei: The habits of the kainga are death to the brown loafer, but the assumption of semi-pakeha habits is death and contusion 100. There are two ways oi preserving the feeble remnant of a great and stalwart race. The one is to allow the remnant to live the Maori life without let or hindrance or interference from the pakeha and without any of the oakeha trappings and tricks ot civilisation. The other way is to insist on every Maori living the pakeha life in its entirety—constant work, struggle with adversity—in short—the battle of life. The Maori dislikes interference with his wierd hotchpotch of ancient and modern habits, usages and customs, but he should be interfered with daily and hourly, forced into work and obedience and compelled into citizenship. If the whole Maori population was coerced into line with the pakeha, the lethargy, the deadly apathy, the soft drowsing way of existence would cease in a generation. A law against the intermarriage of the two people would preserve the vitality of the native race, tor the vitality of the hybrid is merely transitory. No half measures will be of service. The Maori needs conviction and coercion, his white triends are convicted and coerced daily and he escapes. The “spineless kindness’’ of the pakeha is the Maori’s sentence of death. Reprieve can only come in one way. The way is work.