THE NEW ZEALAND WAR.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1060, 25 June 1869, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND WAR.

(From t}\& ". Melbourno Daily Telegraph.") Moee massacres in New Zealand, and the line threatening to stretch out until the crack of doom. More men wanted in the field and more money in tho coffers, and tlie Imperial Government as resolute in refusing the one as the Middle Island is determined to veto any borrowing of the other, The Colonial Government, at their wits' end, call Parliament to meet as soon as Prince Alfred can be sent on his way dancing before his piper, and in the meantime makes' a very bad use of such resources as they have at command. With Wo distinct seats of war, they operate alternately with their one force in each. When he Jias chased the wily Maori in the West,. Colonel Whitmore is called upon to do like service in the East. His commissariat, and his troops arc transported round the island at a.. great ] O3S o f time and .waste of money, and the western savage re -appears on the scene, rejoicing in his own peculiar way. Titokowaru enjoys this merry dance in Wangauui as much as P ; j?iftce Alfred does his Highland jigs in Qtago,' ( and neither of them has to pay the piper. . The story of this 1869 campaign is told after the manner of the stage directions iii'Shak'espeare's Itichard. Scene I. the West -Coast. Alarums. Enter Colonel Whitmore and Titokovraru, and exeunt fighting; M.'Betreat and flourish. (A lapse of|si£:W.eeks:is supposed to occur.) , Scene 11., fche- East. .'Coast. Enter Colonel WhitntoW'-'witli . his forces marching. •Alarums and execursions. ExitToKooti. ?J?he HaU^aus go before, Colonel Whitmore follows after; the British soldier, dqing.thpi. Auckland ," block," grinneth at t]»e. sight -thereof. AU this,, would be exquisitely diverting in a burlesque, but unfortunately it is a tragedy which is being enacted. Harried fields; burning homesteads* and murdered families are but sorry matters to jest about. All wo can do< here, is to hope that the ■New : j Zealand Parliament when it meets, will see the necessity for giving the "self-reliance policy" a fair trial, which it has never yet had. A vigorous campaign in each district might effectually dispose of an enemy who amounts to no moro at present than a local banditti. And there would be great propriety and a reasonable prospect of success in asking Great Britain for material assistance, not in men, but in money. It is hard to believe — and the tone of the London press does not warrant the assumptidn—that a mother country will utterly desert a colony like New Zealand in the midst of trouble which the mistaken and ill-timed policy of that mother country has .provoked. If the connection has been cut, why .is Prince Alfred sent out to bo feted P ' Is there no incongruity between the fantastic tripping at Dunedin and Te Kooti's fantastic tricks at Mohaka ? Britain is sensitive as to her prestige, and Britain is a country of precedents. She cannot like the marked significance of tho one precedent history lias to show. Eomo abandoned , her distant settlements when theknifeof the savage was at their throats. Buif at what period of her history P Gibbons points the moral in the history of lier decline and her fall.