RUA ON THE RAMPAGE.

Free Lance, Volume XV, Issue 817, 25 February 1916, Page 8

RUA ON THE RAMPAGE.

Strong Measures Needed. ST is sincerely to be hoped that the Government will display no weakness with regard to that impudent rascal, Eua, the so-called Maori Prophet, who is l defying the law of the land, and laughing at the puerility of the efforts made to bring him to justice. The fellow is an anointed scoundrel who, not content with blasphemously calling himself the Maori Christ, has recently been making mischief among the King Country natives, telling them he is the Kaiser's agent, supplying them with vile grog, and egging them on to refrain from enlistment. Sentenced to a term of imprisonment for sly grog-selling, this impudent combination of religious fanatic, disgusting sensualist, and sly grog-seller, now defies the police to arrest him, relying, it is evident, upon the fact that his deeply ignorant and fanatical followers are armed. The police, so the telegram states, "withdrew.'' * » » * But the matter cannot be allowed to end thus. At all hazards, at all costs, Rua should be arrested and clapped into jail. The present Government, and those which preceded it have been far too tolerant of Eua's mischief-making. Even if a couple of hundred of wellarmed police have to be employed, even should there be bloodshed as the result of such an expedition, the rascal should be run to earth and taught, with his followers, that the law must be obeyed. Meanwhile, it would be interesting to learn who has supplied Rua and his people with grog and firearms. We should never be surprised to learn that some storekeeper of German birth has been at the root of the trouble. What the Huns have been trying to do in Madagascar, what on so large a scale they actually did do in South Africa, they may quite probably, in our opinion, be attempting to do amongst the more ignorant class of Maoris.