THE EPIDEMIC.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 196, 18 August 1913, Page 2

THE EPIDEMIC.

(To the EOllnrJ Sir, —I see. that yonr morning contemporary, m the endeavour to justify its attitude towards tbe Maoris, makes the astounding statement: "The Maoris and the Maoris only are attacked by the disease." This is not only untrue, but impossible, unless, as that journal so often seems to think, the Maori is a being of altogether a different order to the pakeha. .May I trespass, by your favour, so mnch further on the public attention as to point out the sheer accident by -which it is that this epidemic developed itself among the Maoris! Suppose the person who unconsciously imported the epidemic to our shores had been a visitor to Dunedm—say, a teacher to the Boys' High School, welcomed and made much of at an Old Boys' gathering, and thereby the disease had, before it was identified, been scattered, np and down. Otago, what epidemic would it have been tb«n? If the unlucky visitor had gone to a railway constrnctaon camp, which in a few days had. been ibroJcen op and the navvies scattered over other jobs, but still living after the manner of men on such work, wonld it have been called "the navvies' epidemic,," and should we told that navvies, and navvies only, contracted the disease? Such ways of writing must have two evil results amongst others—they induce a false security in tbe pakeha, and add to prejudice against tihe Maori.—l am, etc., AIJBERX WTLSON, Headmaster, St. Stephen's School for Maori JBoys.