MAORILAND!

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 62, 15 March 1927, Page 8

MAORILAND!

(To tha Editor.)

Sir,^-Now having rendered to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, may we be allowed to further draw attention to the tribute we owe to the earlier occupiers of this land—the Aryan Maori! Before Julius Caesar two thousand years ago invaded Britain, and Romans, Britons, Saxons, Danes, and other pirates and Aryans fought one another for freedom in a free land, until the Norman stepped in and brought them into line. The Brown Aryan from Asiatic sources, still in the stone age, but the greatest navigators the world has known, had crossed the Line and populated the Pacific Islands, where Cook first met the Maori. Tasman a century earlier'had sighted the land and hitched on the Dutch name of the land of dykes and ditches, an ignominious name for the Ultima Thule of this truly great race of navigators, the Maoris, and one it is no credit to the British to have retained. If this great feat in navigation by the Maoris' progenitors is insufficient to induce us to generously perpetuate their name and fame, there is yet one moie.

During the Great War "Gallipoli" stands out as a name known to all the world. Certain ac^irs in that campaign have been distinguished by the name of "Anzacs." They were all Aryans and all Australasians: that is to say, Australians, our fellow-colonists, and Maoris. It would be a fitting tribute to the Maori race, which first discovered and populated these Islands, to adopt the name of "Maoriland" for the land we occupy with them, in remembrance also of their loyalty and bravery.—l am, etc., J.P.M. 11th March.