TRAVELS OF RATANA.

Shannon News, 5 August 1924, Page 3

TRAVELS OF RATANA.

MAORI HEALER IN ENGLAND

Among tlie London journalists who paid special attention to the arrival in England last month of Ratana and his band of Maori followers was a member of the staff of the Manchester Guardian. In the courst of a lengthy article he says:—f'l .have seen Ratana. That is to say I' have seen the 43 Maori "men, women and boys who have arrived from New Zealand, and I know that he was one of the middleaged men in the party. I saw them ail in the charabancs when they alighted on the pavement outside the hotel near Paddingtom station, where they will stay for the next few months, but who of them was Ta.hu Wiremu Ratana himself 1 do not know. # "Rauma has come to visit the Wembley Exhibition unofficially. He will probably travel about England, but his secretary, Mr Moko, a youngish, light-cqmpiexioned Maori, void me this evening tnat all his followers are under an obligation not to disclose. his identity to anyone. You will not be able to prevent people finding him out, 1 said. We travelled for three years all over New Zealand, Mr Moko answered, without anyone recognising him, and if we could dp that in bus own country .we can do it here. Even on the boat on which we travelled lor two months none of the Europeans discovered him, small as the scope of the decks was. "Probably it was with the idea of camouflaging their leader and enabling him to move about undisturbed that so. large a parly came with him. Mrs Ratana anu their young son are with him.

Alter a, recital of his personal impressions oi the party, in the course oi winch he refers to some ol the younger women as "typical beauties," the writer states that Mr ivloko told iiini that "Ratana will not see any Europeaii , 'journalists. During the live' years 1 have been with him. he has not seen one. All their information comas through me. He keeps himself apart, for he has work to do, and if it were allowed he would he kept busy with, visitors. During the year 1921 two thorns and .Europeans and Americans came to New Zealand hoping to see him, hut people must write to him when they want to he healed. All his work is done by correspondence." THE NECESSITY FOR FAITH. Asked whether Ratana would continue his work of healing in England, the secretary said that depended on the applications made to him. The applicants must have faith. "If he had been here last week," the interviewer asked, "do you think he could have healed a child I was anxious about, who died ol meningitis?" "If she had faith he might have done." "But she was unconscious; how could she have faith?" "Then if her parents had faith. There must be faith. It is the faith that does it. not Ratana." He added that during the past-three years Ratana had received 165,000 letters from sufferers in many parts of the world, .and 100,000 of them had received benefit.

Mr Moko said that Ratana refused to accept money from any of the people he has healed. The money was always returned. Altogether a hundred thousand pounds had been returned, most of it to England and America, hut a large sum to. other countries. "We have not sent back quite all of it," said Mr iMoko, ".Sometimes when it has been in notes Qf foreign currency we have kept back a note as a souvenir."

Another interesting statement by Mr Moko was that "out of the 53,000 Maori inhabitants of New Zealand, 40,000 now range themselves under the spiritual leadership $| Ra,tftna,"