I recall the present Bishop of Aotearoa quoting some lines from a Maori song in welcoming the Rev T. G. Niles at Turangawaewae Pa, Ngaruawahia, last year, and then stating: “that is as fine poetry as anything in Shakespeare if it could be adequately translated”, and there is no doubt whatever that both in its prose and in its poetry the Maori language has attained expression of a very high and beautiful order. Part of the action of Maoritanga undoubtedly is the realisation and revaluation of the things that are distinctively Maori, and outstanding in that category is the language, which is the very breath of the Maori soul. Allied to language as an elementary fact of the racial entity designated Maoritanga is the art of the race, evidenced generally in carving, weaving and reed work. Just like language, this is an emanation of the mind, an expression of the inner self. It is surely notable that the Maori people, who had never had the fortune to dwell in a country where metal could be developed and who were therefore limited to stone tools—wherewith tree felling, canoe fashioning and house building had to be carried out with great labour—were not content to create things of mere utility, but in those untoward circumstances lavished art on carved prows and stern posts of the ocean canoe and on the door posts of the tribal houses, and developed the arts of weaving and beautiful reed work. This art and the appreciation of it is surely inherently an article of Maoritanga. These are the accomplishments which are indigenous to the race, and which are the utterance of its very self. And if perchance we encounter at times some members of the race living in very unaesthetic circumstances, it should be manifest that this is not a feature of the true-to-type Maori life that spontaneously gave birth to carving and art in spite of great handicaps, but that it is the degeneration consequent on the inpact of pakeha civilisation on the life of the Maori. And because the Maori has innate within him an appreciation of art and beauty, true Maoridom must always regret any members of the race finding need, or voluntarily choosing to live in slum conditions and the spirit of Maoridom should lead every informed member of the race to labour with devotion for the full recovery of the artistic temperament hereditary to the race. The third feature of Maoritanga which requires emphasis is the fact that the Maori is a social being, that his life is community life, that he is gregarious, that grouping is to him the very blood of life. Because the Maori is a community being, isolation is to him most forlorn and totally frustrating. For the same reason he is a team worker. All the work and undertakings of a Maori community were done by the team effort called “ohu”. Realising that Maori life is community life it should be easy to understand the spontaneous and abundant nature of Maori hospitality. True-to-type Maoris do not live entirely for themselves, nor yet even in a primary way to promote the advantage of their individual family, but to seek for the welfare of the whole tribe; and because a communal person loves to have others about him, and because as true community people Maoris delight in giving service to the community, hospitality is to the Maori an exaltation and a delight. He has no regrets if he spends on his guests the abundance which we would think should be retained for the more assured sustenance of his immediate dependants. All those who become intimately acquainted with Maori life are impressed with the delicate etiquette of true Maori deportment. That, of course, is a characteristic of people whose values and outlook are those of community. The untutored Pakeha is apt to transgress much Maori etiquette simply because he is an individualist and is not trained as the Maori to think in terms of community rather than of self. But the Maori sense of community is more than the embracing of the living and immediate community. It is community with the long and storied past as well as with the present environment. At every great gathering of the Maori people the songs of the long past are sung and genealogies that relate to far away generations and inter-relate living people with ancestors of the dim and distant past are recited. It is not merely that the Maori has a better historic sense than the average Pakeha. His community life stretches back over the centuries and unites him with the whole cavalcade of his race. Try to make him a Pakeha and a mere individualist and you have stripped him, like some plant, of every leaf and flower-bud and left him with a gaunt and naked stem. Because Maori life is community life the village courtyard, the marae, is its true centre. Because European life is based on the family unit, the hearth is the centre of life. Because Maori life and all its outlook and values is a community entity, the marae is its centre. There the people meet and find their deepest satisfaction in being together. As they say, “Ko te kite atu, Ko te kite mai”: just to see one another, just to be together, just to have the joy of propinquity.