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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 980, 21 September 1881, Page 2

Sensational telegrams are now the order of the day, and those in our columns this morning are more sensational than ordinary. • The chief feature in them is the anxiety caused by Mr. Rolleston’s enunciations in the House, in which he.endeavored to tone down, if not explain away, any for immediate alarm. Our correspondent, while stating facts, ventures his opinion that things may or may not be as they seeni. For our part we confess to a conviction that if things are not at their worst now they soon will be, for the present state of affairs cannot, morally or physically, last much longer ; inanition on the one hand, and a longing desire for revenge for alleged past injuries and imprisonment, on the other, rfiuSt, ere long, bring about the end, and thb -sooner the better. We do not wish to see the colony embroiled in another war, but it seems to be unreasonable to expect those Natives, in their present frame of mind, lo do ought else than fight. Of course they will accept their own time and opportunity —not burs —and these they are moulding to their own will. Under all the circumstances, it is gratifying to know 7 that the Government are ready to face the danger; but the real question is not so much the propriety of waiting its approach, as to make an advance, and force matters to an issue.

The supineness of the past; and the inglorious beginning of most of our contests with the Natives should teach us that there is as much danger in delay, and in military procrastination, as in the probability of hostilities becoming general if once begun. While we are sleeping the Maori is watching; and if the Government allow themselves to be thus lulled into a false security, pretending all the time that the Natives are peaceable—but they, nevertheless, prepared —depend upon it history will repeat itself, and the first boom of another war will come to us through the wail of murdered women and children, desolated homesteads, and the yells of a lot of savages thirsting for the garbage of blood.