APPROPRIATE PROCESSION

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 244, 15 October 1931, Page 5

APPROPRIATE PROCESSION

A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

The procession arranged to celebrate the Jubilee of Patea was staged in appropriate fashion. It fell to the function of the Patea Brass Band, under Drum-Maj B. W. Haddow, to lead the British flag, borne by a standard-bearer uniformed as they were in the days when Patea was a garrison town. On each side of him were officers of another age, their scarlet coats, brass fittings and bril-liantly-finished helmets, contrasting markedly with the sombre khaki and steel-helmeted army representatives who marched beside them, typifying a modern and more effective force. Behind the unit which escorted the flag came a lorry on which was mounted the latest pattern machinegun, its muzzle looking out over a sand-bagged parapet. What a difference between this up-to-date weapon and the swords carried by the redcoated files of a “parade” from out the past. Just in rear of the gun marched representatives of the Maori race. There were warriors garbed in the style of long ago, wahines with green leaves in their hair and a younger generation more in keeping with the pakeha. The mind picture created by the head of the procession paid tribute to the power of the flag which was carried so triumphantly between the armies of yesterday and to-day. Such had been its influence that the two races, brown and white, marched as one. Sixty years ago they had been rivals in a new land. Under the banner of Britain they had become an effetive combined force, living, working and dreaming of a better New Zealand.

And there was a significant note, too, in the demonstrations at the Domain, where a Minister of the Crown (the Hon. J. A. Young) was accorded a rclaistic Maori welcome. Mr Tupito, made an appropriate speech, recalling that his ancestors had been the first to settle Patea. It was fitting, therefore, that it should be the Maori who was to welcome the pakeha. “Welcome, welcome,’ welcome,” he said, “to the beautiful little islands called Aotea-roa. ‘Aotea’ means ‘good,’ and ‘roa’ means ‘long’; so if you put ‘good’ and ‘long’ together you have ‘a good long tree,’ and by that we remember the long tree that stood on Waikiki, and from which were made two canoes.”

A further portion of the procession displayed the changes man has wrought in the course of time. The old cab-horse was re-commissioned, ami vehicles which did duty as conveyances to and from the station were paraded just in front of the most modern of motor-cars. It would appear that they played golf in those early days, for a bag of clubs raised its head over the side of the cab door. There was a smiling damsel leaning out. “How we go to golf,” she exclaimed to passers-by. “Come on to