The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13. THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8002, 13 December 1905, Page 2

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13. THE HEATHEN IN HIS BLINDNESS.

Some people are bravo eno.igh when t.he blood is stirrel to "rus'i info the imminent deadly breach." Some people, like Fcirier, the fishor hero )f the L;i Bella wreck, are really brave, and coolly and unflinchingly biittle into the breakers, just because they can't help it and are born that way. Some people are bo brave that they will send the last man to war - and stay at home themselves. Other people send missionary girls and boys to China. And that's the point, If

you can for the moment take the view point of the Chinese savageswho butchered five missionaries and children at Lienchou in China the other day, you have to admit that from that standpoint the savages were doing what nature told them to do—stay the interloper. It is just the sort of thing our ancestors did. It is often the case that where the missionary well-intentioned and self-abnegatious man as he invariably is—goes, he makes trouble. There would be no trouble if he didn't offend—unconsciously no doubt in most instances—what are to the benighted heathen the most sacred things on earth. # * * *

The Christian missionary is unable to see that a good Confusian is a better person than a bad Christian, and the jbad Confusian is no worst* in the eyes of his Maker than a bad Christian. If the Oonfuscians came to New Zealand and set up joss houses and acquired land and went in for a wholesale system of " conversion "—wo being the " heathen " in their eyes—we should t probably not murder them, because our primitive instincts have been eradicated by the fear of human consequences. Yet the would have just as much moral right to start such n

campaign as we have to worry old age religionists with the comparatively new precepts we profess to follow. Not only Christians suffer for their religion. The Hindoo fakir lets his flesh rot and wither in his fervid worship, and neirly all regionists are more self-sacrificing than we are. Are we doing a noble action in inducing young girls without the least knowledge of the Asiatic character to take thoir lives in their hands and go in amongst the hordes of yellow men who never have, nor never will in any one particular, become Christianised, except for some ulterior motive

We Christianise the Chinaman whom tile colony lias admitted. lie becomes a Christian for the most part for the advantage it gives him in his contact with the white - usually educational ami lingual advantages. He was intended to be a Cliiuanian. The 'aft that he affects the. shibboleths of the "foreign duvil" doesn't make liirn abetter lunii than lie was when ho worshipped something he could see in the shape of an hideous image, and which lie resigns for that which is a greater mystery to him than it is to us. We send unlearned people to the Asiatics to wc-in other people from the knowledge hid in them. We sacrifice good and noble lives continually, and send soldiers and sailors to slay the slayers who have acted only in accordance with their own religious convictions. It is as palpable as fact can be that we do not under stand the Asiatic and that he doesn't understand us. lie comes amongst us by paying lis a premium, and while we admit him we break him of his customs and make

for following the habits that existed among his forefathers before the Christian religion was ever thought of. We don't "convert" him by fining him for smoking opium or playing fan-tan or pak-a-pu. We give him a £IOO license to come to New Zealand to do these things, and we send a few brave souls into the seething 400 millions of Chinese to root out a religion older than any other form of worship on earth. The brave souls sutler. We send 45,000 Chinese coolie* of the worst class to j Africa, and are surprise 1 that they escape and murder and torture white people. We put cordons of armed men round the compounds because we are Christiana and they are heathens, who wouldn't be the villains they are if they were in China, where thenhabits are understood. We find everywhere the Asiatic in conflict with the European, and we do nothing to stop it except to poll-tax the aliens. We are not surprised that the Asiatic resents the interference of the " foreign devil" with his habits and customs, Why ? * * * *

Did we resent the inter ference of our blood relations, the Boers, with our habits in the Transvaal ? Yea, verily. We precipitated the Indian mutiny by our scorn of the Hindoos' religious susceptibilities; laid up a store of undying hatred in Egypt by shelling a sacred tomb, and drew the curse of the Thibetans on us for an attack on the sacred place of the Llamas. Why do we do these alarming things in the name of civilisation ! Where does the good come in ! We read about the brutality in the German army, the dreadful poverty of the myriadsin Eugland, the drunkenness and immorality of folk in the Old Lands. And how do we cure it all? Why, easily ! We send some of our best men and women as missionaries to people who have known neither clothes nor shame, to teach them to eat of the tree of knowledge and when they have tasted of the avil as well as the good we shell the in to death. Our "civilising" ■(forts have sprinkled the earth with j ilack coi-pses. '"Wc arc the Chosen People: look at the Inn' of our skins Others are black or yellow—that is because of their skins; Wc nre the heirs of ages, the ninsters of every riice, Proving our right to the title by the bullet's saving grace! Flaunting our colors in triumph over a world-wtde grace. Wc are the Chosen People, whatever we do is right, Feared as men fear the leper whose skin, like, our own, is white !"

THE PEOPLE AND THE POKE SHORE.

We will be rather disappointed if no effort is made by the New Plymouth Borough Council to retain to the buigesses and our hundreds of seaside visitors the right to walk by the shore abng the base of tlie cliffs below the town. This is a matter that cannot be hung up or delayed - | action must be taken, promptly and 'decisively. At present the Railway Department intonds to take a .strip of land along Woolconibe Terrace, j md other areas fronting the sea, a.s referred to in Monday's issue. This means that between tlie beach and the town will be stretched a barrier impassable to fo )t or wheel traffic except at a few places, and even there only foot passengers may wander on to the sands. Not only this, but, it seems the town is to be robbed of one of the favourite promenades, for scores of people regularly frequent Woolconibe Terrace to obtain a breath jof the briny. Are we going to allow this ? At present the beach below the town is accessible only at a few points, the railway authorities having allowed us right-of-way in two places by means of convenient footbridges. Surely it is not intended that the same conditions are to be made to apply to the foreshore as far as To Henui! We would suggest that the Borough Council bestir itself during the next few days or weeks. By payment of fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds it should be possible to persuade tlie Railway Department to make its embankment wider than at present intended, so that an esplanade of about twenty feet in width .should flank the seaward side of the new railway line. The popularity of our present esplanade is sure proof that such a scheme will meet with the full approbation of a large section of the ratepayers. Had this matter been taken in hand when the railway yards were extended a few years ago it is quite possible that in the near future we should have an unbroken promenade from Kawaroa Park on the west to the old Canoe Reserve at the mouth of the Henui River. Such a convenience is now, unfortunately, out of the question, but there is no reason why we should bo debarred from using the sea-front from the present railway depot to the Ilenui. The matter must be taken up wholeheartedly, and no time lost.