MAORI QUEEN AS CRITIC.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12824, 17 October 1911, Page 6

MAORI QUEEN AS CRITIC.

HER REGRET FOR BRITISH HYPOCRISY.

SACREDNESS OF LOVE.

"There are bad ones, I know. I do not think of them. But a good Englishman—ah, he is the man! He is chief among men!" In her familiar crimson head-dress and feather cloak, Maggie Papakura, guide and queen of the White City's Maori village, and daughter of a line of chiefs stretching back for 32 generations, was sitting in the simple white-washed room that is her own especial dwelling. She was talking frankly and at leisure to a 'Daily Chronicle" representative, who had gone to learn something of what their first season in England had taught the wonderful people about ourselves. The very first day they camu they were bombarded with folk [ who wanted to know their impressions . jol London and so on. Naturally they ' not know They had not seen it. Now, after three months, the state of affairs is just a litle different. So, at any rate, Maggie Papakura confessed. "I. cannot express to you—at any rate in English—how much I have grown to love your country, to love your people/ continued this charming and accomplished Maori lady, her dark eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "Before I came I seemed to know England —for I had learned your • language, your history, your geography in my home. But how many things I did not know after all. There is the beauty of your country. 1 have been staying with English pooplo in Oxfordshire, 1 have been to Oxford. How shall I speak of the peaceful meadows, the streams, the grey, silent old buildings! They spoke to my heart. They were like the dreams of my girlhood come true —my girlhood, when I wandered all alone in the wilds around my native village, far away in New Zealand, with no companions but fho trees and birds. My mother, though she was.of the old school and knew not a word of English even till her death, saw that I should know the language of the pakehas, or white folk. She saw that there were some things ?n your civilisation that were good. So she .-;ent me to an English school. But she did not wish me to forget all that was "beautiful in the old Maori ways and thoughts. She was a wonderful woman. TOO FRIVOLOUS ABOUT LOVE. ''What is there in you that is good? Well, you are strong; you are restless, j'-mbitions, clever., always scheming what you shall do next. You have wrested ■ the secrets from the earth. You have brought light. You have driven away the fear of darkness. You cannot tell how- much that means to n Maori—the fear of darkness! I feel it now, sometimes —though with this lovely English twilight, Which we never Lave at home, there seems to be hardly any darkness at all. "You ask me what there is that is uot good—what there is that makes me still glad that T am a Maori ? I will tell you something that I was thinking •tibouti only <:lris day, for I am always learning and thinking. I used to, be- : lievo that the English were serious— . too serious. I have come to fancy that they arc not serious enough over a groat many important things. Shall I tell you what one of them is? It is love "In England people laugh at love. They make jokes about it. They think that when a boy and girl love one another it is something to smile about. 1 look around me in this White City, and 1 sco all sorts of young people 'flirting/ as you call it. I go to a dinner ■ party and 1 hear marriages being dis- i cussed. 'Oh, yes, I love him well l enough; but i love his money better!' j ■;:hat was a phrase that caught my ear ■! only the other day. It sent a shudder I through my whole body. ' j "As a Maori I cannot, understand] how it is that you make light of thia \ —the most, important thing in the life '! of every man and woman. With us. I both lovo and marriage are sacred ' things. In our beautiful Maori religion < wo believe, as perhaps you know, that everything that exists was brought m ■ to beine; by the marriage of the earth ! and tho sky. In the beginning they wero locked together in a close embrace. They were separated by their children—tho god of war, the god of tho winds, and others. But the earth , wept at being banished so far off. So the sun was given^o light her by day, and the star- to light her by night— ••Mid through these her husband looked down upon her, and the little white, clouds carried his messages of love. "Although my mother had me brought up in the Protestant religion, as it had • i eon exploined to her that it would be. , | best, in my heart I still cling to these \ j old Maori thoughts, and so, 1 believe, | does every Maori. So it comes about j that to tho Maoris everything —sunrise j ftnd sunset, the flowers and the dew—- I bi ings its message of the sacredness of love. With us marriage is a sacrament, '! and a married woman is more holy than : anything else in the world. I know of ' nothing more impressive than our ' Maori marriage service, in which the : hi ido is solemnly entrusted by all the ftathcrod chiefs of her tribe to tho tri bo or her husband, who accept the tiusfc and will answer for it with their ■■ blood. Then the bride herself is warn- j ed that henceforth her life must be (le- j voted, .to her-home (in which she is su- \ promt-; mistress), her husband and her ; children. Although I hear so much liore of the advance of woman, and. i as you know, in New Zealand women have tho vote —I have one myself, as a land proprietor—the English' suffragist .•night learn something from the happi- ! viosr: and power of the Maori wife in her own sphere. ' ■TflK TENDENCY TO HYPOCRISY, i "A«;nin, there is another thing in ', which. 1 have to express my disappointinent with tho English. * This is the '■ tendency to hypocrisy. My mother, as an old-school Maori,' taught me to be absolutely natural and simple-hearted. But I go to your At Homes, and I find people who have been saying they hate (.no another a moment before throw i toeir arms round each other's necks j and toll all sorts of falsehoods. Wo ; Maoris never do tli.it. If we do not i hko --uiyono v.c recognise that there is • ne need to say f-o, but we don't make l'i-otests of affection. With us, of course, personal likes and dislikes don't count so much as with you. Jt is a, question of the tribe. "Then there is the power of kind- : ness, both in Jaws and in the home, : which you doivt stem quite to under- '• stand. When, for instance, a girl or : n boy is lound doin,o: wrong he or she is rarely ininished, but, on the con- ■, tmvy, pitied and forgiven. And gen- j orally tho oiTence never happciib ' *gain. Theft we _simnly do not know, ior t.r.o stranger is always welcome to what we can give him. Ho may take what ho likes, r.nd there is no word in :-axv language either for 'Please' oi'Thank you.' To us it is natural to l share our goods. We have no locks, j and in most cases no doors. The result ; is that there arc no Maori poor and j n>> unemployed. Nearly nil Maoris ■ aro landowners, and if they are not. th« ; tribal feeling is too strong for a Maori j man not to work —on a f.:ottlemont, I j mean. for in tho towns, of course, j many pet^ corrupted. In the old days i the Maori warrior was ashamed to ! work, but now it is the other way. It ■ often reminds me of the spirit of an i English cricket team, in which na-ono ; is forced to do his best, but riono tho ; less always does. So, too, in the home, everything i.s done by kindness. I have never known Maoi-i parents to thrash their children. "Against all this, of course, you

have to set the ignorance and intertribal cruelty of the old days of warfare, the fear of the unseen, and the fact that under England's peaceful rule there is but little ambition among the Maoris, such as would make this communal life impossible. I recognise that with your strong race, with a crowded country, and a perpetual strugglo for life, many of these happy features of Maori life are simply out of the question. So tho faults that I have spoken of don't stop me from loving and admiring you English—above fill the qxnet, old-fashioned country people. Ido not like, so much, the peoplo of^ the town —they are too noisy and frivolous for my taste. But .1 know of no one in the world—and I have met people of all nations —to equal in genuineness and quiet force of character the best sort of English country gentleman." —London "Chronicle."