THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 1909. THE YOUNG MAORI PARTY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 13949, 4 January 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 4, 1909. THE YOUNG MAORI PARTY.

The intention of the past students of Maori secondary schools who have decided to form a Northern Branch of the Young Maori Party is a noble one, but we venture to say that their methods are utterly impractic- ! able. That the Maori is possessed of an intellectual capacity which ; frequently compares favourably with that of gifted Europeans we all know; but we also know, and should be frank enough to express our thoughts, that the Maori is doomed if he remains in his present environment, and that the only hope for him is to accept European conditions and make a strenuous effort to live the normal European life. To attempt to reorganise the Maori life within narrow and traditional limits is a wild dream which could only occur to such dreamers .as many Maoris are; yet we look in vain for any movement, within the Maori people, that aims at breaking up the communal life, sweeping away communal ownership, and making English the common tongue of Maori and Pakeha alike. So far from there being such a movement, the Young Maori Party openly seek 6 to make the preservation of the native language and the study of native folklore primary purposes of their organisation and we have actually had a proposition that Maori should be made an optional subject in university examinations. Yet if the question is examined impartially and judicially, it will be seen that the speaking of Maori lies at the root of the problem, and that if the Maori tongue could be eliminated, and English given to the Maori people in its stead, they would by that change alone be most remarkably and permanently advantaged. We might far better attempt to preserve the county dialects of Britain, which are in the core of our racial progress, and possess a virility and force often lacking in the more precise and formal " English" of the schools, than to preserve Maori { among our native fellow countrymen. It has little, if any, value as a literary tongue, and is only interesting to philological experts, while it has the enormous disadvantage of shutting the Maori people away from European influences and European conceptions. The Pakeha-Maori duea-.not usually .bring to. the native race what is best in the European. The average decent Englishman is notoriously adverse to speaking any language but his own, and will not trouble to explain himself and his ways to any who speak a strange tongue. The Maori cannot possibly acquire decent European habits and decent European forms of thought unless firstly and foremostly he learns not only to speak English, but to think in English, and thus to perceive the spirit which is embodied in the word.

The Maori people have produced some notable men and some admirable students, but it is not notable men and students who form a people or whose preservation is of great national importance. The Young Maori Party so far appears to be quite convinced that a separatist policy is possible, that the Dominion will go on for ever as it is now with Maori and Pakeh'a remaining distinct and separate, and with the Maori remnant adhering solidly to Young Maori leaders. We are to have Maori doctors and lawyers, orators and statesmen, professors and renttakers ; little is said and little thought of the hewing of wood and the drawing of water, of the swinging of the axe and the guiding of the plough. The British race is strong and dominant, sure of its future and stubborn in its methods, not because of its' handfuls of educated leaders, but because of its multitudes of self-sufficient and industrious men and women; and the future of the Maori is being decided not in Parliament or in Cabinet, not by interesting conferences or in hot debate, but in the thousands of workshops and tens of thousands of farms where hard-handed colonial Englishmen apply to the Maori the test of "work" and so far find him wanting. Where is the movement among the Maori to popularise industrious effort, to acquire European skill in agriculture and the handicrafts, to encourage every man to work hard and to give to every man the fruit of his industry? Certainly there are occasional sporadic and spasmodic display of interest in these directions, but there is no sustained energy. There is no evidence that the Young Maoris, or any other organised section, are imbued with a deliberate and intelligent desire to place their people upon the European pbne of patient industry. The Englishman, from one end of the world to the other, must work or starve, must do what he can wherever he cannot do what he would. The Maori must come to the same practical state, if he is not to perish amid a trackless forest of meaningless resolutions. If the industrious Maori is always to be sponged upon by the lazy; if the incapable Maori is to become an idling aristocrat and a standing illustration of the folly of any Maori exerting himself in the

foolish fashion of the Pakeba; and if every decent European influence is to be repelled by the influence of an alien tongue, unbroken alien traditions and the debasing life of the kaingas; then there is not hope for the Maori, and we need not concern ourselves greatly about his future. For there is an inexorable justice which destroys inferior and demoralising methods of living by exterminating all who adhere to them. That the Maori methods are infinitely lower than those of the European few will question, and it is plain that the Maori can only be elevated to the European plane of manners and morals by breaking free from the thousand tie's to savagery and barbarism formed by the native language and the native institutions.