DAYS OF TE WHITI

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22970, 23 February 1938, Page 17

DAYS OF TE WHITI

Sir, —Mr. Howitt and Mr. Large have challenged my interpretation of the prophet of Parihaka. There is bound to bo difference of opinion on every event and person in history. But I did not think there was chance at this time of day of a revival of the post-Maori War mentality of the seventics and eighties. Mr., Howitt would dub everybody that believes the Maori was nob always justly treated a Maoriphilc. To say a side has a case is not to say it is always right, and is certainly not, as he implies, to belittle the pioneers. It would be a hopeless job writing history if we had to refrain from condemning a policy lest we should offend the devotion of some hero-worshipper of its authors, livery Now Zealand historian of repute that 1 know insists • that To Whiti richly deserved the tribute on his monument that lie was a lover of peace. Somo of them say that it was he and he only who saved us from another Taranaki war, which the policy of the Government made almost inevitable. A Royal Commission set up to investigate the Parihaka troubles while there was still a chance of reasonable and conciliatory settleriicnt, reported emphatically in favour of the natives. "The disaffection was only the natural outcomo of a vacillating and futile policy; the trouble might have been mastered at any time if only scrupulous good faith had waited on steadfast counsels and consistent purpose. The only right way was that the land which was rightly theirs, with their villages and cultivations, their burial grounds and fishing places, should bo surveyed, marked off on the ground, and handed to the Maoris as their inalienable possession." The commissioners who made this report wero Sir Francis Bell and Sir William Fox. But this report was disregarded. To Whiti was a passive resister. But the fear of the Hatihausi blinded authority to his pacific intentions. To Whiti suffered for Titokowaru's and Te Kooti's sins. If my To Whiti statistics are astray, as Mr. Howitt says, I have been guilty only of copying from the Parihaka monument. Kotark.