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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 981, 24 September 1881, Page 2

Our telegrams this morning from Parihaka and adjacent villages, are of a more assuring character than those in onr last issue. They, however, disclose the anxious and agitated state of the public mind, at least that portion of "the public less exposed to danger than those on the spot whence danger may, primarily, be looked for. We place some reliance on the discretion of our correspondent ; and we doubt not that in sending us information of such an opposite kind, in so short a space of time, he had good grounds for believing both to be correct. Of course we have only to place the bare facts, as we receive them, before our readers ; and we can well understand both the sensational and the re-assur-ing telegrams to be correct. For our part we think it unwise to go to the extreme of either excessive alarm, or unwarranted apathy. What has happened before may happen again ; and it will be satisfactory to know that, owing to the watchfulness of the Government, if hostilities cannot be prevented, they will not be ushered in with the usual celebration of a bloody carnage of defenceless settlers. We place little reliance on the Natives being determined not to fire until fired upon ; for it is possible that they may so provoke us to anger that we shall be forced to choose between inducing a rupture by taking them prisoners, or fighting the matter out at the point of the bayonet.