THE CELT AND THE MAORI.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 17

THE CELT AND THE MAORI.

DR PURDY'S IDEAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND. February 29. Dr Purely, District Health Officer, who, by the way, is one of the most energetic and enthusiastic public officials Auckland I at any rate has ever known, has high ideals as to the future of the Maori. Whilst the To Aute Association on the one hand is aiming at the compilation of historical I Maori records, and Messrs Alfred Hill and I Arthu) Ooldie, on the other, are engaged ' in presening Maoii muMc antl pictured j Maori types respectively, Dr Purdy foresees ■ possibilities for the race which do not , appear to ha\e occurred to anyone else, and, speaking- at the Te Aute Conference yesterday, he remarked to the Native re- { presentatives : "Let it nof be said in time, to <K>me that your children's children are degenerate descendants of a, decadent race. ' Rather let us hope that the best traits of the Maori, his courage, his natural courtesy j and good breeding, his eloquence, and poetry will be preserved for all time in the J grear nation which is growing up in New < Zealand. As New Zealand has developed ; the highest of natne races, so optimists like myself think, she will evolve the j highest type of the human race. If proive-ss in the field of sport and war count for much, ' this prophecy might l>3 fulfilled. At the ' same time we must show equal prepress in arts and sciences. "What little literature New Zealand can claim is associated with the Maori. Mishi we not, as Dr Pomare puts it, have a combination of the white man's more pro«aic mind and the poet : c Maori trend." Should the world ever produce another Shakespeare one could not conjure up a more likely origin, he added than that of the combination of a Celt and «. Maori. i