How's This ?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 15 April 1909, Page 582

How's This ?

Colonel Gudgeon has been celebrating the tenth anniversary of his office of, British Resident to the Coook Islands by ' A Letter to the Group,' which appears in English and in Maori in The Cook Islctnds Gazette of January 28. We take therefrom this curious paragraph .

'On the date in question,' says the Resident (namely, the date of his first arrival in the Cook Islands), ' you owned but one institution that might prove a blessing, you had but one evidence of civilization to prove, that yon were under a stable and enlightened form of government, and that was the Tereora school which had been initiated by the L.M.S. [London Missionary Society] and subsidised by your government. The school has at all times afforded an education most suitable for the young people of these islands, and will have a lasting effect on their future. It Avill indeed do more for the salvation of the Maori population than all of tho doctrinal teaching of the various sects, who are attempting to save your souls.' The Cook Islands are a dependency of New Zealand. We have no objection to the Resident saying the best he can in regard to the work of the London Missionary Society's religious school. ". But we are desirous of knowing if one of the official duties of the British Resident of the Cook Islands is to institute ' odorous comparisons ' between creed and creed, to dub as ' sects ' the otlier' faiths that are laboring zealously in the group,, to sneer at their 'doctrinal teaching,' by implication to pronounce as more or less futile their ' attempts ' to save the souls of the natives, and to make an official Government publication (to _ the cost of which, as to the Resident's, salary and perquisites, members of all creeds contribute) the medium of disseminating this slight among both whites and Maoris? There was trouble in the British Parliament over an attack by

a recent Governor of New Zealand upon the religious convictions of a portion of the population. And even in the minor field of the Cook Islands it behoves tlie head of the local Government to^ maintain in his official capacity a decent measure of neutrality, and not to embroil himself in the rivalries of creed and creed.