FIFTY YEARS AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15913, 10 May 1915, Page 3

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

WITHDRAWAL OF THE TROOPS,

WAR LEFT TO SETTLERS.

(From the FEEALD of May 10, ISG3.) In the hour of our greatest need, when, goaded and irritated by a feeble and imbecile war policy,, tribe after tribe lias been allowed to drift, or has been driven, into rebellionat a time when N'ew Zealand is about to enter on the nost dangerous phases of the present itniggle—at such a moment the Imlerial Government lias derided on the ,'iitual abandonment of the colony to t.« fate by the withdrawal of one-half if the troops now serving in New Zeaand. Britain has saved £800.000 on he Army Estimates for the present year >y this and other reductions. To do so ihfl has abandoned a colony which, by ]•■[• own mismanagement alono and by 10 fault of its own, has been brought) i]to this state of embarrassment, of mora han embarrassment, of actual danger, The; .Maori,, not without ca/nw, has ooked upon himself so far as the victor n the present struggle. The withdrawal if one-half of the troops will be received jy him—as it is, in Fact—as an avowal >f defeat on the part of the Mother ConnT- v - _. . .. Wo can scarcely believe that

lie Imperial Government 'would havi taken such a step— .-top so derogatory to the honour of the tuition, so unworthy of the part of a great nation towards one of its dependencies— it not rej ceived the moral support which was 1 furnished it by the present Weld Admin iptratfon. Little does the Mother Country know the motives which actuated iho present Ministry in that recommendation. that ..it was less the result of a desire to benefit the colony or the Empire than to crush a rival province. ... Britain leaves the New Zealand I war as a legacy to the colonists. We i must take the matter into our own hands. - I It is the last recourse we would have* i hoped to take up, but it would have been: I one which British pusi'nnimity and Maori' ! aggression will have forced upon us.