MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 13 April 1935, Page 5

MAORI MEMORIES

(By J.H.S. for “The Daily Times.”) BUTLER’S UTOPIA. In conversation many white women and a few effeminate men indulge in what one lady calls “organ recitals,’, a practice happily tapu to. every Maori woman or man. From childhood, the Maori is taught that when we are ill it is almost invariably due to . some indiscreet omission or commission, therefore not even to be hinted at. in polite circles. Hospitals for the sick would bo unmentionable, and are therefore not provided. Whare herehcre (gaol) is the home for such offenders. If one dies from any other caus®than extreme age or in battle, the premises aro burned in order to remove the disgrace. ' A Turoro or sick person is banned to silence and contempt, thus to be shamed into gaining the good habit of health by moderation.

On the other hand, with the exception of those who had a tendency to develop into habitual criminals, wrongdoers, especially the young, were treated with the utmost kindness and coneideration, under which with very few exceptions they reacted in a remarkable way. The genuine sympathy and trust of those around them, shamed them to repent and reform with an alacrity which surprised those pioneers who were apostles of drastic punishment hero and hereafter. Scottish men and women who came in the early forties never recovered their surprise at this reversal of centuries old tradition, the days of an eye for an eve.

‘ Samuel Butler, the third great thinker of that name, undoubtedly gained from the Maori people the knowledge which inspired him to write that remark a lib* book “Ereliwon” (“Nowhere ’•■inverted') in 1872, and again to emphasise his discovery in “Erehwon Te-visited ”in 1901. The influence of this revolutionary treatment of sickness and crime, and his nersonal observations in New Zealand aro reflected in the pages of his other seven volumes.

Erehwon was regarded almost universally as humour and fiction; but. it has its sequel in New Zealand’s splendidly altruistic system of children’s courts.probation, borstal, reformative detention, and prison refortn. If only our religious teachers would follow the example of TliA, Man of Sorrows and the old Maoris, Butler’s Utopia would be here now.