ARAWAS' OFFER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 217, 14 September 1939, Page 5

ARAWAS' OFFER.

SERVICE OVERSEAS.

WHERE DANGER IS GREATEST.

UNANIMOUS RESOLUTION.

(By Telegraph—Own Correspondent.) ROTORUA, this dav. A protest against the action of a . meeting of Whangarei and Northland | Maoris in carrying a resolution opposing j conscription, and asking that the "Maoris j battalion be reserved for home defence only, was expressed unanimously at a j large meeting of Arawa Maoris held last I night. On the came evening a parade of |o\er 80 Maoris was held, and elementary | drill instruction was given by returned | soldier officers. j The meeting carried a resolution j stating that so far as the Arawas were concerned they made an unconditional offer of man and -power wherever the greatest danger threatened, and that in the opinion of the meeting that danger point was "not in New Zealand," but beyond the shores of the great ocean Kiwa, the sacred pathway of our ancestors in the misty past, and later of their descendants in their journey to the heights of Gallipoli and the plains of Flanders, where the spirit of their comrades who never returned now beckons them to hurry." The resolution concluded: ''Let others hesitate in this, our extreme hour of . peril and need, but the spirit of the , Arawa and associate tribes throughout .jAotearoa flames at the deeds of wanton | aggression, and demands that they again be allowed to cro-s the seas to stand i >hoiikler t" shoulder with their . brother*, sharing with them equality sacrifice in defending the same ideals thev fought for 25 years ago. . The text of the resolution has been . sent to the Acting-Prime Minuter, tha I Hon. P- Fraser.