TE KOOTI'S CRIMES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 473, 6 March 1933, Page 3

TE KOOTI'S CRIMES

HISTORY RECALLED IN FIFT Y - YE A R-OLD COMMENTS. "Te Ivooti has so long enjoyed a fell notoriety in New Zealand as the reputed author of the terrible massacre perpetrated at I'overty Bay 15 years ago that it is not at all surprising to find considerable attention exeited hy his admission to amnesty," remarks the Wellington Post' of 50 years ago. "Every newspaper in the colony has in its leading columns discussed the matter from its -own viewpoint. One view largely held is that Te Kooti is a blood-stained miscreant, who ought not to have been pardoned evcn if the fate of the colony and its inhabitants had ' depended upon this being done, but who should have been promp'tly lynched if caught or shot down at sight like a mad dog. . . . "T'here is no doubt that Te Kooti's past actions have been had enough, and we have not the slightest intention of even extenuating them. But they were eommitted in circumstances )f severe provocation. Te Kooti and his followers, after escaping- from an unjust durance and exile, in which they were detained by a gross breaoh of faith, and after displaying signal moderation and gentleness in the manncr of their escape, were being hunted down like wild beasts and no quai*ter given. And while thus endeavouring to exterminate Te Kooti and his followers, the Government left the Poverty Bay settlement exposed to their vengeance, and the terrible massacre of November, 18C8, was the result. It was a war of extermination on both sides, and the massacre was distinetly one of the dreadful deeds which always arise out of a war in which a savage race is one of the combatants. "Excesses are sure to be perpetrated on both sides, and there were-many others besides the Poverty Bay massacre, if less horrible than that. These tliings are an essential feature in' savage warfare, and the sanguinary reprisals to which they lead are always taken as a matter of course. Had Te Kooti and his followers been exterminated in the campaign which followed the massacre, everybody would have recognised it as a righteous retribution. But a time must come ,sooner or later, when past offences must he either distinetly condoned or else definitely avenged at all costs. At the stage now reached in native affairs, it had clearly to be deeided once and for all whether the colony should devolve in cost of £>lood and treasure. of Te Kooti, whatever that might involve in cost o fblood and treasure, or whether it should recognise his past misdeeds as political offences, eommitted in time of war, and so not excluding hina from p'articipating in an amnesty. The Government deems the former alternative impraeticable and the latter expedient, and in our opinion it is right,"