your man-made stars, while the weeds throttle your most precious plants? Do you really believe that youth is being ‘cherished and cultivated’ as is their right? Or are they being left very much to fend for themselves, to sink or swim—and too often it is to sink—amidst the loneliness and dross of some trashy white-woman's ‘bed-sitter without meals’. And when it is the Maori, easy-going and ill-equipped who falls victim to undesirable elements, do you read with a hint of haughty scorn that ‘the crime rate among Maoris grows at an alarming pace’. Could it be that the frost-nip of fear startles you into an awareness of the profusion of the rose so that—within the shelted of your garden—you arrogantly proclaim, ‘the colour's running wild—there'll always be trouble with these young Maoris' while, leaning on your garden gate, you tell the passerby that ‘everything's fine here—I have no problems—everything's equal in my garden’. Get up out of your chair, take your arm off the garden gate—and get to work! Build some good homes for your Maori youth—and for your own children who must come to the cities. Good hostels with community centres and educational facilities and room to accommodate some of the elders of the tribes. You can run up, very quickly, a new state office complete with all modern devices for yourself; be as urgent in the provision of housing for the young. And provide the young people with good hard satisfying work, not make-shift easy-money dead-end jobs. And withal, exchange one large quota of haughty indifference with but one small quota of humanity. And Maori friend! Remember, white is not always right. Some of New Zealand's Pakeha youth are a travesty on our heritage; they have bespoiled our culture, they sicken the soil of our homeland. Do not imitate them. You who of yourselves have a nobility and dignity, a rare and precious culture of your own, hold fast to your ideals; teach your own youth to maintain those standards that we can respect—teach them that they may also be teachers of the Pakehas, that we may know the full richness of your language and your tribal life. Understanding and mutual interest, tolerance and forbearance are the tools that will bring our garden to full fruitfulness. With or without a certain pigmentation of skin we would not expect two persons or two families of widely diverse interests necessarily to become completely absorbed in one another. Racial background, home environment, hereditary capacities, schooling, social interests—these are the points of contact, these the points on which problems are poised. Colour is but the flame which, used with discretion, can burn the weeds, but used in passion and anger will destroy the garden and the home. –H.Q.

Maori Theatre Trust

He Mana Toa News of the Maori Theatre Trust's excellent production of James Ritchie's He Mana Toa spread through Wellington so fast that by the end of the week-long season—part of Unity Theatre's jubilee festival last March—long queues waited outside the small theatre and the audience filled every available space. Originally written as a ‘sound and light’ production for the 1965 Hamilton Arts Festival, with tape-recorded sound and mimed action. He Mana Toa was this time given Richard Campion's expert direction, Leigh Brewer's striking and sensitive choreography, a full and vocal cast, and electronic music effects by Douglas Lilburn. The play is in three parts. In a prologue,