have his portrait painted by William Dargie. This portrait was painted at the home of Frank Clune in one day and now hangs in the Brisbane Art Gallery. Shortly after this trip he was convicted of sharing a battle of beer with a fellow native back in the Centre. The ever zealous long arm of British justice, upholder of law and peace etc., etc., was right on the job. There'd been nothing doing in the centre for months, Albert's friend took a swig from the bottle and then went walk-about. The law got to hear of it and rushed at Albert with notebooks and pencils and a subpoena as long as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The fact that Albert and his people, like any other ancient society, had been sharing more vital things than a drink from the same bottle for centuries, didn't matter in the least. He was an Australian citizen and should have known better. For his generosity to his tribal brother Albert was sent to prison for six months. All through his trials and while the press reverberated with pleas on his behalf and various literary figures and art circles took their places behind him, Albert remained aloof and more than a little bewildered. He was thrown into a compound with all the down-at-heels—the methos, the scum of the earth, the killers. Albert was brokenhearted, his mana was desecrated, his leadership jeopardised, his spirit well and truly broken. In his own words—the white man had pointed the bone at him. Less than six months after his release Albert Namatjira collapsed while painting his beloved mountains 90 miles north of Alice Springs. Since his death, the Hermannsburg School of Art for Native Artists has been without a leader and the artists have all gone walk-about. Let us hope that Battarbee will have sufficient influence to get them back on the path again, united perhaps under the leadership of one of Albert Namatjira's sons. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ Of the total New Zealand population of 2,174,000 enumerated at the 1956 census, 137,000, or 6.31 per cent were classified as Maoris. This is stated in a report on the eighth volume in the 1956 census of population series. The volume deals with Maori population and dwellings. Of the total Maori population, 96.2 per cent was located in the North Island and 72.5 per cent in the Auckland provincial district. The drift to the towns, a characteristic of the New Zealand population generally, was accentuated in the case of Maoris. Where 9 per cent of Maoris were located in cities and boroughs in 1926, this rose to 19 per cent in 1951, and 24 per cent in 1956. Though there was increasing intermarriage between Maoris and other sections of the community, the majority of the Maori population, 64 per cent in 1956 compared with 71 per cent in 1926, were classified as Maoris of full blood. The occupations of the Maori labour force showed less diversity than the European, though the differences were less marked in the case of the female working populations. Data on Maori incomes were collected for only the second time in the 1956 census. More Maoris than Europeans were in the lower income groups, though again the differences were slighter for females. The comparative youthfulness of the Maori population would contribute to this, but was not enough by itself to account for the differences in income distribution. Similarly, the higher proportion of wage and salary earners and lower proportion of employers and workers in the Maori labour force was explained to some extent by youth. As in the European population, the religious denomination most strongly represented in the Maori population was the Church of England. However, the second largest denomination for Europeans, Presbyterian, comprising some 24 per cent of the population, claimed only 2 per cent of the Maori population. After the Church of England, the largest religious bodies among Maoris were Roman Catholics with 16 per cent, Ratana with 14 per cent, Methodist with 8 per cent, and Latter Day Saints with 7 per cent. Of the total adherents of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) 75 per cent were Maoris. ⋆ ⋆ ⋆ The Citizens' All Black Tour Association, which fought discrimination in the selection of the team to tour South Africa, will disband this month. The possibility of a permanent organisation aimed at promoting race relations in New Zealand is being studied. One of the final acts of the national organisation may be to seek a bipartisan policy statement on race relations from Parliament. This was one of the main submissions a deputation made to the Prime Minister, Mr Nash, and the then acting-Leader of the Opposition, Mr Marshall, in February. Mr Rolland O'Regan, chairman of the Wellington branch of the national executive, is known to be anxious that the present organisation should end now. It has always been his belief, however, that the country needs a permanent body to promote understanding between the races. There has been no move yet to form such an organisation, and many questions have still to be studied before a decision will be reached.