"OPENED UP."

Observer, Volume XXXVI, Issue 49, 12 August 1916, Page 2

"OPENED UP."

A Prosperous Future.

THE average man whose friend has said to him, "Oh, well, the Rua case is over at last," exclaims, "Yes, it will open up the country!" He doesn't mean that the gorgeous country over which a primitive fanatic ruled will be. developed tat once or anything of the sort. He means that the Maoris, having been engaged in a long and costly suit, will have to, sell land to pay the costs of the action, and there are people who really believe that the element of gain (pakeha gain) was the mainspring of the in- % teresting events that led up to the longest trial in the history of NewZealand. The primitive person who has been sentenced "to a term of imprisonment is a cuVious result of his association with the pakeha. All his. undigested religion is a hotchpotch Christianity, not more grotesque than the variations indulged in by the Dowies and the Worthingtons of white society. Rua seized on the primitive minds of the Maoris as the mysterious nonsense of pakeha maniacs have seized on the untutored minds of white people.

The learned, patient and fair judge who heard! this case traces the troubles' of Rua to his desire to make profit by defying the white man's licensing law. In short, the white man who broke the law by making it possible for a primitive person to obtain liquor to retail is, by the judge's showing, the cause of Rua's downfall. Rua presumably would hare meroly carried on his comparatively harmless and grotesque religious commune if the "desire for gain," which Mr Justice Chapman mentions as. Rua's sin, had not afflicted the white gentlemen responsible for the supply. Rua's journey to Wellington with his hirsute followers some years ago ai'oused the instinct of gain in his primitive mind. He was received with a kind of indulgent amusement by our greatest pakehas: He had all the symptoms of the born fraud then.' He couldn't help ii*. but he should have been prevented from carrying out his plans at that time. We quote the case of Dinizulu, a dangerous African chief, who was so tactfully handled by the British authorities, who thought it useful to destroy his power by pensioning him and drawing his teeth with kindness. Dinizulu's whole trouble was that he was a pinchbeck imitation of a white man. Rua's whole trouble was that he was a wicked imitator of the white man in the white man's most unlovable character.

When it became necessary to "open up the. land," the. public' were asked to believe that a large force of primitive men in practically unknown country, and under the influence of the Kaiser, intended determined armed resistance to the Crown. The State did not bait a hook for Rua. It expected, by an ostentatious display of arms, to impress the primitive minds of a number of natives not comparable to any other body of Maoris in New Zealand,, and. certainly not comparable to any white community in the world. We don't find anywhere in the reports of the trial any reference to general arming of the Maoris. The weird tales about Rua's "machine gun" and rifles and so forth dwindle, mostly to a couple of shot guns. It is. not even proved that the commander of the armed expedition, a life-long police officer, knew the law in its entirety, or that Sunday was not the correct day to effect certain formalities. The public (which after all doesn't really matter) isn't quite sure whether, the police made war on Rua or whether-Rua made war on the police, the public generally contenting itself with the comforting thought that where the Maori once roamed in some kind of semi-primitiveness, the land agent's voice will now be heard. The public recognises, of course, that Rua is properly prevented from sly-grog selling, that he is justly debarred from referring

admiringly to the Kaiser, that his peculiar variant of Christianity (of which there are at least 150 other variants) should be stopped in a Christian country, and so forth and so on..

As in all cases of weird religionists, white, black or coffee-colour, the "spirituality" of Rua was based on the physical. Rua couldn't have been the kind of Christian he was, for instance, with one wife. Gentlemen of his kind, with their words on heaven, always have ,their eyes on earth, and it seemed necessary to prove that Rua was not even a marriage law unto himself. Nobody particularly minds Rua being in gaol, but there certainly are people who believe that the superior intelligence of our admired police force might have devised some better means without hurting any policemen", but we h|ave no doubt the constabulary would have fought with equal gallantry had the Maoris been really armed and capable of ■strong resistance. But, as couriers for the "opening up of the land," the police deserve the kindest thoughts of all land agents.