A Wellington newspaper, ‘The Dominion’, has donated a cash prize of £100 for the winner of a Maori choir contest. The contest, which will be one of the classes of the Wellington Competitions' Society's festival held in August and September, will be open to choirs with a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 40 performers, who must appear in Maori costume. The class will be known as ‘The Dominion’ Maori Choir Championship and will be in two sections, a test piece and an own selection. The test will be the hymn, ‘Fierce Rage the Tempest O'er the Sea’, and the own selection item must be a choral, not an action song. After working on the ‘Aussie circuit’ all this winter, the Howard Morrison Quartet hopes to travel on a concert tour of the East and may take up a contract in the United States later this year. ‘If it was just a matter of going to the States, we could have gone 18 months ago,’ Howard said. ‘But most contracts tied us down for too long a period. We'll be back in New Zealand if I have anything to do with it.’ Training in the carpentry and joinery trade is now available for Maori boys at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The special carpentry centres established in these three places now provide pre-apprenticeship training in this trade for 72 Maori boys each year. In addition, special one year pre-apprenticeship courses in plumbing, electrical wiring and motor mechanics are now being conducted at the Seddon Memorial Technical College, Auckland, with twelve Maori boys in each class. These special schemes now provide training for more than 100 Maori boys each year. These schemes are available to Maori boys living in country areas, who are not able to obtain apprenticeships in or near their home towns. If your son qualifies under this heading and is interested in taking up a worthwhile trade when he leaves school, you should get in touch with the nearest office of the Department of Maori Affairs to learn more about the scheme.

Continued from page 5 feel myself that Maoritanga will be embellished by the pursuit of Western civilization.’ Mr Bennett said that the concept of appointing a Maori as head of one of New Zealand's overseas missions four years ago was a new development in our international politics and was viewed with interest by a number of countries—particularly in Africa and Asia, where it was assessed as being symbolic of New Zealand's racial policy. As a result, the image of New Zealand as a tolerant, enlightened country had been enhanced. During his appointment in Malaya, Mr Bennett said he had been struck by the number of words in the Malayan language which were identical or similar to Maori words. This had afforded personal proof of the accepted theory that native races from as far north as the Philippines and Malaya, and right down to the South Pacific, were all part of the same language group and shared a common origin. This was probably one of the reasons why he and his wife had not felt strangers in Malaya; nor had they been treated as strangers. By undertaking schemes under the Colombo Plan to help raise the living standard of Malaya (now second to Japan among South-east Asian countries), New Zealand was strengthening one of Asia's last strategic outposts resisting the spread of Communism, said Mr Bennett. For a democracy to exist, he added, a country must have a reasonable standard of living and literacy; an efficient civil service; and secure and able political leadership. At least one of these attributes was missing in any country which had been taken over by a dictatorship or Communism. ‘Every penny we have put into Malaya has been money well spent’, he said. ‘By helping Malaya we are really helping ourselves.’

One of the very few Maoris to gain a Master of Science degree in recent years is Quentin Tapsell, who belongs to a well-known Rotorua family. Last year Quentin obtained his M.Sc. in crystallography at Canterbury University and was also a University Rugby Blue. At present he is at the Teachers' Training College in Christchurch.