OLD BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1939, Page 4

OLD BATTLES

REVIVAL NOT DESIRABLE. CENTENNIAL PAGEANTRY. In the “New Zealand Centennial News” the Hon. W. E. Parry. Minister of Internal Affairs, states that the reenactment of battles of the old-time wars in this country is not desirable in Centennial pageantry. “One of the main purposes of the Centennial celebrations is to show that the Maori and the pakeha have left behind them the few old disputes which occasionally led to bloodshed, and arc linked now in friendliness to assure an increasing measure of prosperity and happiness for New Zealand” says the Minister. “Anything which tends to give reminders of old troubles should have no place in the pageantry, but, of course, the various events of the past century would have proper accurate mention in the histories.” The Minister remarks that he is emphatically supported in his view by a Centennial message which Mr Ivor Te Puni, of Waikawa Pa, Picton (a direct descendant of the famous Hon Sana Te Puni), sent to the Right Hon. M. J. Savage. “The hardships, the bloodshed, between the pakeha and Maori have now, a hundred years after, been healed,” wrote Mr Te Puni. “Even bloodshed between Maori and Maori has also been healed through the march of civilisation. Today the token of greeting between the pakeha and Maori is ‘Tatou Tatou.”’