CHARGES AGAINST THE MAORI RACE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11371, 2 September 1908, Page 5

CHARGES AG AINST THE M AOR I RACE.

(To the Editor of the Herald.) Sir, — Allow hie once more to. throw more light (or blackness) oil' the Tauinarunui Native school agitation. Your readers, are under the inipression that it... is only the . charge that the NatiA^e children at Taumaruirui Avere infected with skin diseases that I s6 strongly resented. Bad and untrue as that charge was it is 'the least objectionable. A pagan signing himself m the NeAV Zealand Herald "Conservative," m reference to the school, said: "The moral side of the question is not printable. The children come from, schodl • infested with small yellow insects, . . . aciilneous affection, locally known as Maori itch. Finally, a cesspool is roses compared to tne aroma arising from a roomful of colored children on a. hot day." This is what I call filthy, flowery' language. Another pagan, signing himself "Children's Friend (m Avhose vocabulary, only Avhite children can claim descent from the genus homo) said: "There are children to Avhom it Avould mean death to be brought into contact Avith Maoris." Mr Edgecombe, of -the Auckland Education Board, took' up tho charge of skin diseases, not, against tho Native children at Taumarunui, but against the entire Maori race, and, of course, must hit somebody. " He 'evidently found out his charge could not be levelled against the much-maligned children on the bank of the Wanganui river. The strangest part of the Whole business is that it ' should be left to Mr Edgecombe's day to discover the death-bringing miasma that exudes from the presence of - the Maori, Avho must be a more civilised being hoav than he Avas fifty years ago. It is a marvel that Mr Edgecombe and his creAV ever lived to tell the tale. The logical conclusion is thatHhe more civilised a race becomes the more Jiable it is to skin diseases. So Dr Smith may be right. The cause of the Avhole trouble is the Minister for Education's refusal to obey the dictates of the nobjlity of Taumarunui to grant a separate school for their children, and so the poor inno- | cent colored children avlio live by the waters of the Wanganui have been pitchforked on to the altar.— l am, etc., REWETI T. KOHERE.