THE WAR POLICY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2693, 5 November 1881, Page 3

THE WAR POLICY.

(“ Auckland Star.”)

The crisis is not one that, to our mind, in any sense justifies war. The attitude of the Natives has continued so peaceful that even up to the time of serving the proclamation on Te Whiti, Europeans have gone in and out of Parihaka freely without restraint, and have been cordially welcomed and hospitably entertained by the prophet and his people. Parihaka Natives have come with equal freedom into our settlement. So notorious is this that in a telegram yesterday we find two gentlemen who visited Parihaka since the proclamation was served, noting as a sign of its effect that the usual friendly greetings were withheld, although they passed through the settlement unmolested. Despite exaggerated and lying wav. telegrams from New Plymouth, facts like these tell us that a state of things calling for suppression in blood has not existed up to the present. But if it had, the action of the Government in first returning some able-bodied fighting men to the Plains, and then making war upon them, would amount to a lunacy not exceeded by Te Whiti’s own. We shall, no doubt, be referred for a justification of drastic measures, to Te Whiti’s speeches against the Government. Given the validity of the plea, and Mr Bryce’s favorite motto that Natives and Europeans should be treated alike, and a warrant ought to have been issued for the arrest of Sir George Grey long ago, for no man has been a more persistent foraentor of popular feeling against the Government and resistance to its proposals. If war and bloodshed be the legitimate penalty of an unarmed agitation, the Government may level its battalions against the first public gathering in which the righteousness of its policy and decrees is controverted. If past experience in Native aftairs in New Zealand goes for anything, it proves unquestionably that these recurring Native difficulties will, by the exercise of patience, settle themselves. The situation on the Plains does not ■trike us as one calling for heroic remedies. The settlers of the district are by no means alarmed; in fact they obtain most of their news about hostile movements of the Natives from the press of other parts of the colony. We have been applied to for information for the benefit of Europeans actually occupying land at the seat of operations. So far as the settlers are concerned, the molestation has been of a very limited character —the fencing and ploughing of perhaps fialf-a-dozen patches of land. There has been no personal violence. There are, it is true, the vapouring* of Te Whiti and Tohu, but these have received too much attention. If the Government will only leave Te Whiti Severely alone, treating him with indifference, while they firmly assert the law upon all who break it ; if they will arrest the fencers and ploughmen, and send them to trial ; if they select stqrdy settlers for the Plains, and put them there under the conditions S.C-. cepted by American backwoodsmen that they shall he prepared to. take a large share in their own protection ; if, to support these settlers, they establish a few strong redoubts, well

supplied with arms and ammunition, we are confident that the native difficulty on the Plains will settle itself in a few years, as the King difficulty is doing. It will be settled, too, at a trivial cost as compared with war, and without any loss of life ; without disturbance to the rest of the colony ; without damage to our credit, or interruption of the peaceful pursuits which are pushing the colony forward with racehorse strides. Its settlement will vindicate alike the dignity, humanity, and forbearance of the colonists. If, however, Te Whiti should preve madder than wo take him to be, and provoke war by forcible resistance to the exercise of the law in punishing natives who defy it, the colonists Would have the satisfaction of knowing that this is not one of those wars which they could have avoided with honour.