MAORIS AND ALL BLACKS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25607, 23 September 1948, Page 4

MAORIS AND ALL BLACKS

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

“As a South African keenly interested in New Zealand, I have, been very much perturbed to read in our local papers of the ill-feeling which has been caused in New Zealand over the question of excluding Maoris from the Rugby team to tour the Union next year,” states Mr Frank Ellis, of Colnyn, Pretoria, South Africa, in a letter to the editor of ‘“The Press.”

“Many New Zealanders, it seems, consider this an. insult to the Maoris and believe that they are not wanted here. This is quite a wrong impression which I should like to try to some extent to dispel,” he says. “Most of us in South Africa are well aware that the Maoris are a cultured and refined people ’ with whom we would not hesitate to mix, and. whom we would be pleased to welcome here. The fact that our troops mixed freely with them in North Africa, is, I think, proof of this. It is precisely because they are of such high standing that it is better that they should not be included in the touring team. Whatever the merits or demerits oi the colour-bar in this country may be, the fact of its existence cannot be lost sight of, and even in the countless difficulties of waiving it for the Maoris, so far as hotel accommodation and rail travel are concerned, could be overcome, they would still be laid open to insults and indignities either deliberately from a few reactionary and narrow-minded people who, regrettably, do exist, or unwittingly, through ignorance on the part of otherwise well-meaning folk, both black and white. \

“Incidents of this sort would be bound to crop up constantly and mar the success of the whole tour. We, as hosts, would be miserably humiliated, and more ill-feeling would assuredly be aroused among New Zealanders than now exists as the result of a well-intentioned but misunderstood suggestion that the All Black team should consist only of Europeans. Finally, may I ask those who condemn’ the colour-bar here not to judge us too harshly. Its faults and anomalies are many, but if some workable alternative could be found for maintaining law and order and the ordinary decencies of life in a land where the white population is outnumbered four to one by millions of only half-civilised natives, one of the Union’s biggest problems would be solved.” concludes the letter.