THE "SYDNEY HERALD" ON NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 1002, 5 December 1868, Page 4

THE " SYDNEY HERALD" ON NEW ZEALAND AFFAIRS.

The news of the Poverty Bay massacre was received in Sydney on the 19th Nov., and the Herald of the following morning has an article on the subject which does credit to the head and heart of the writer. " The natives," says the Herald, " do not see—and they can hardly be expected to see—how every temporary advantage they gain is followed by a tremendous recoil — that the more they dare war to the knife, the sooner their destiny is accomplished, and that the best chance for their land, for their lives, and for their race, is in peace and submission. The more the weaker party in a contest fights, the sooner it gets exhausted, nor can any courage and cunning save from its doom a decaying race, which seeks to restore the lost balance by the weight of the sword. European spectators, able calmly to calculate the respective forces of European and Maori, and their relative rate of increase, and with the repeated experience of history to guide them to their conclusions, cannot fail to see the ultimate issue of the conflict. But the fanatical and half-educated Hauhaus cannot see beyond the place and the time, and the exultation at a successful surprise conceals from them the inevitable reprisals. The greatest kindness to the Maories would be to make them see that their real interest lay in submission, and that all that was possible for them and for their property was to be found in that policy." The Herald further observes :—" The Government will, of course, not only be provoked, but compelled to adopt prompt measures to punish this outrage. Merely to remain on the defensive at that place is impossible. European prestige could not tolerate inaction. At none of the outposts would the settlers be safe if deeds of this kind could be patiently acquiesced in. Whatever may be said as to the origin of the war, or the rights and wrongs on either side, is now a question of the past. The issue between barbarism and civilisation mnst be settled, and there is but one way in which it can be settled. There must be a display, not only of authority backed by irresistible force. * * * The difficulty of following up the Maoris in the tangled country in which they can so easily find refuge has already been proved; but it is not an insuperable difficulty, and the problem must be studied till the modvs operamM is discovered. The task cannot be left undone, and the method of its accomplishment must be found out. It is an obligation which cannot be shirked."