PARIHAKA ANNIVERSARY

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1931, Page 15 (Supplement)

PARIHAKA ANNIVERSARY

THINGS TO REMEMBER. TWO POINTS OF 4 VIEW. A correspondent of a Wellington, paper suggests that as this is the jubilee year of the famous march on Parihaka and the arrest of Te Whiti the young fellows who took part should get together next month and fittingly celebrate the anniversary. That notable event in history can be regarded, writes “J.C.” in the Auckland Star, from two points of view. It was a great lark for most of the Armed Constabulary and the volunteers, fifteen hundred of them, assembled to capture the “stronghold” of the prophet, and a proud day—somewhat appropriately it was Guy Fawke’s Day—for the Hon. John Bryce when he led the invasion on his big white horse and surrounded the unarmed, unresisting open Maori town. It was great fun drafting out the various tribes like mobs of riieep and shipping, off droves of the passive resisters to gaol and packing away their women and children in bullock drays, and demolishing the prophet’s sacred house. But the young fellows in blue who enjoyed the stir and excitement of the military life on the plains of Taranaki knew nothing of the devious and discreditable political history underlying the invasion of Parihaka; nothing of the intense patriotic sentiment behind the Maori side of the “native difficulty.” They did not know that they could have been ambushed and shot down at a score of places had it not been for the peace counsels of the muchreviled Te Whiti. Neither they nor the settlers who coveted the 'Maori estate took the trouble to understand the problem of the confiscated lands. It was not considered necessary at that time to try to consider problems from the Maori point of view. Nor was it generally known in the campe how closely the native question was linked up with considerations of cash; how a Minister told Cabinet that the possession, survey and loading of the disputed lands were necessary because the sale of the fertile country north of the Waing.ongoro River would place in the depleted Treasury half a million sterling; aud how even before the native reserves were marked’ out advertisements were hurried off to Australia offering the choice lands of the Waimate Plains for selection. By all means let the surviving veterans of the march ou Parihaka get together and fight the bloodless campaign over again, and honour the memory of that splendid set of experienced frontier soldiers, the men who officered the Constabulary Field Force. Colonel (Roberts and his group of officers were the pick of the little New Zealand army of that day. But let the survivors of the recruits whom those good officers knocked into shape remember that it was just as well for them that a peace-at-any-price Te Whiti controlled Taranaki Maoridom, and not a Titikowaru or Te Kooti. Te White was perhaps correctly described as a religious fanatic. But his fanaticism took a form that saved the colony from another war. Had he not thought fit to sacrifice his liberty for the sake of peace, the Fifth of November, 1881, might have seen fireworks in Taranaki that would have required a bigger army than John Bryce’s fifteen hundred to extinguish.