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Ancient Maori Life full of StrTflss. The impression must be dispelled from our minds that in/ pre-European days the Maori lived a life of idleness. The available evidence points in the, opposi% direction, and shows that his was a full life, a life of stress in a harsh climate—harjsh for a/racial stfoei which for very many centuries had sojourned in tropical or subtropical lands, where Nature was indulgent. In the islands of Polynesia from which his ancestors migrated, where the picture of Jthe good-humoured, lazy, lotus-eating Polynesian was the conventional Western with the resulting foodshortage, accentuated by social and religious difficulties, provided the stress which compelled him to seek less crowded lands with simpler problems. In *h'eislands of New Zealand he had to adapt himself to the conditions of a c»lder which few orEte introduced food and other plants could maintain a hold. Adaptation and the subduing /of elements new in his experience added strength to the Maori physique and character. Whether W house-building to combat the rigours of the climate, or in clothing, or in the devices for collecting «ad storing fish and fowl, or in persuading the cooler «oils ta e prjQduce crops from subtropical plants and seeds,,-difficulties were met and overcome by Maori .iijiiiinri- tmm bo new foots and ?naterials\empirical solutions inspired by racial experience over many seas and in many lands. While he customs,- Vtet mythology, and psychology may have become stereotyped, his mastery over material things, «?&&,; i neolithic age, proved his possession of a good, versatile, inventive brain and of a humorojis philosojWiic outlook on the world. Dr. Firth further states " that the oldseconomk (structure has given way in corresponding fashion." The last sentence of his able summary defines what he opines to be the most significant change in the economic structure—namely, " that assisted by the deliberate policy of individualizing the shares in tribal land, the former communal system has bden gradually abandoned, as no longer suited to the new social environment." At the base of thr 'system was the social organization with an elaborate relationship cult, which culminated at/the apax in the paramount chief. To say that the communal system has been abandoned as no longer suited to the new social environment is to assert that the tribal organization has broken down, and that t 1 e influence and leadership of tribal chieftains are no longer serious factors in the economy of Maori society. It is necessary to examine these subjects, for they are vital to our assessment of the prospects of successfully establishing a scheme of settling Maoris on land. The Element of Leadership. The outstanding feature of the early economic system was leadership, which may be taken as synonymous with chieftainship. It was found in every department of effort. It was inevitable in the circumstances of a communal system that leaders should be evolved, whether in warfare or in the enterprises of peace. If we follow any line of research in the ancient Maori field and have the check of the genealogical record, we will find that tribal history or tradition centred round some leader, a man or a woman, just as it did in the record of any other people. The constitution of the familv, of the subtribe, and eventually of the tribe, in relation to work of all kinds—cultivating, building, food-collecting, and food-preserving—required that at every step some personality above the ordinary should emerge to co-ordinate the efforts of kinsmen, to settle disputes, to inspire, to unravel difficulties, or to confront strange conditions. The ohu or apu, the working-bee, was the outward manifestation of the community in labour, and it was impracticable without leadership. Hereditary rank, with the constant check of individual efficiency in some outstanding element of tribal importance, provided in normal times the leadership required. So we find that a process of selection over many centuries concentrated the choice in certain families, just as it has done in other parts of the world. This fact the student of Maori genealogies will find abundantly proved by the orally transmitted records. The impact of Western influence upon the Maori polity appeared to be most detrimental to chieftainship, and therefore Maori leadership. The new culture introduced influences which undermined the prestige, the mana of the Maori chiefs, and thus for a period deranged the focus of the tribal system. The frontal attack on Maori culture made by the missionaries was levelled at evils such as cannibalism, a heathen mythology, slavery, and immorality, as judged by Western and Christian standards. It was supported and developed in other directions by Western law and government, which introduced the institution of a Supreme Chieftainship, of a Sovereign, whose existence reduced the status of every tribal chief and induced a wholesale readjustment of tribal relations. There were subtler and less apparent, though not less subversive, influences at work—ideas which infected the Maori body politic and unnerved it at the core of chieftainship. English law imported the conception of equality of man and man, which in regard to land resulted in the assessment of individual interests and the establishment of the right to realize the asset as an individual. It protected the individual from the assertion of chiefly right, as in the days of old. Education, or the lack of it, has to some extent been inimical to hereditary rank and leadership. As one result of the Maori wars the rangatira families retired into an environment of resentment, where they remained for a considerable period. The utmost efforts were necessary to persuade them to come forth. Education for a time brought to the front and set up in competition with the scions of former ruling families a new class, men versed in the knowledge and ways of the pakeha. In the struggle of the Maori people to fit itself into a rapidly changing order of things, where new modes of mental communication, unaccustomed terminology, business details, and official inventories and requisitions perplexed the Native mind, the new aristocracy of knowledge rose to eminence and appeared to lead, while the natural leaders of the people appeared to be shelved or at least to be out of step. In this connection the problem has been further complicated by the process known as miscegenation. The infusion of alien blood, more especially white blood, into the make-up of the modern Maori has led to the assertion by men and women of mixed blood of a cultural and mental ascendancy, assisted thereto by the acclaim of pakeha society and their own forwardness. The value of this

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