The Daily News. FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1911. MAORIS AND HEALTH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 48, 18 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1911. MAORIS AND HEALTH.

The Maori as a general thing never "grows up"—mainly because the pakeha won't let him, regarding him with more or less amusement as a large child who exists to satisfy his own appetite. We boast about the Maoris as being "the finest native race in the world," and we are proud when we hear that London lias gone mad the Maori village and that countesses are imitating the refined and very modernised "hakas" that have been performed in the great city. A real Maori village would not be allowed to exist in London for a week. It would make raving lunatics of the London County Council and would send the health authorities to Colney Hatch. Maoris would not be allowed to live "Maori fashion" in New Plymouth or in any other New Zealand town where the authorities had common-sense, but because they are regarded as naughty children they are permitted to kill themselves and to help the pakeha to his death by their unspeakably insanitary habits in their own kaingas. The condition of the coastal Maori villages are at present creating attention because some cases of typhoid have occurred there. Everybody knows that typhoid is a "dirt" disease —just that, and nothing more. Everybody knows that typhoid breeds in dark, pestilential, insanitary, crowded places; that one patient may cast forth enough bacilli to decimate a countryside, and that the disease is waterborne, and, to get nearer home, milkborne, too. The average Maori will not learn, for he is too lazy and too apathetic, and uses up most of his time in what he believes to be enjoyment. If we were not guardians of the Maori we could simply let dirt and disease and laziness kill them. It is not clear even now whether we want the Maori to live and thrive, but it is clear that we do not want the Maori to kill us by his utter disregard of common precautions that are everywhere the means of preventing the spread of disease. The Maori is an easier victim to our diseases than we arc. We regard measles, for instance, as of small concern, but it has almost annihilated native races before to-day. In the matter of enteric fever the 'Maori is, by reason of his habits, the "perfect" disseminator. Typhoid is a disease of very dread import to the white man, and if Maoris are permitted to disseminate it a grave charge is laid at the door of the authorities, for every school which is attended by pakeha and Maori children is a nesting place for the disease, and every pint of milk in the district, and every creek a. possible carrier of the dreadful disorder. It is time that the Maoris living in filthy villages be no longer regarded as wilful children who have a right to do as they like with their own lives and the lives of the pakehas. As Mr. F. C. Bellringer, chairman of the Taranaki Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, said at the last meeting, the Maori mode of living is injurious to Maori and pakeha alike. Suggestions were made that the Maori be "encouraged" to give up the communal method of living and to get to work. To be quite frank, the average Maori village cannot be cured of its nncleanliness except by fire, and when public opinion is sufficiently advanced countless billions of bacilli will perish with these villages in flames. Unless the Maori is forcibly restrained from indulging in uncleanness, even the institution of the "homestead" system would probably be ineffec tive, for the Maori, as everyone knows, loves to loaf in the doorway of his friend's house, to spit on the nearest floor, and to forget the demands of

decency in other and more grave mutters. The time for pleading with the Maori to be a good child is gone. It is the policeman, and not the gentle preceptor, who is needed, the order, and not the "soft word," the rigorous physical method, and not the gentle tongue persuasion. We do not cope with the unspeakable tangis that still survive ill a modified form; we fail to deal with the wholesale orgies common to the Maoris with "cheques"; we are not quite keen enough on the enforcement of the law that makes it an offence for a 'Maori woman to obtain drink. If we are going to prevent the spread of pestilence from Maori to pakeha, we mustn't beg the Maori's pardon for interfering with his filthy habits—we must root out the filth.