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On this Page 4
The news which, lias just reached Sydney
from New Zealand, and tlie telegraphic sum
mary of whieli we publish in another
column, only too fully confirms our appre
hensions of tlie fallacy of the recent so-called
peace. There is every, prospect^ of p. .re
newal of hostilities on a more serious scale,
and with a change of venue from the ^ neigh
borhood of New Plymouth to tlie neigliDor
hood of Auckland, supplemented by a proba
bility of tlie conflict not being confined for
any particular corner of the island. Mischief
appears to be brewing among the warlike ?
Waikatos ; the Governor and the General on
their side seem to liave tlieir eyes open, and.
to be making every preparation ; and tha
continuance of the war, now that a large
body of troops is on the spot, and that the
humiliation of the natives is still so incom
plete, would be certainly — as well as we
can judge — by no means unpopular with the
majority of the white residents. In point of
fact the colonists have been complaining of
the so-called termination of the- Maori war,.
^ as much as the home public dx- of the i'uet of
such a war at all. And neither feeling, it
must be confessed, is ' unreasonable— neither
that of the public who have to pay m.
cash, nor that of the public who have
to pay in kind— of those who have
to send and maintain troops to carry
on the contest, or of those who have to
bear the losses of residence at . the
scene of operations. There is so strong a.
conviction in England ot the want of fore
sieht and wise management on the part ol
the Colonial office, that it is to be subjected

to a Parliamentary commission of inqu
'While in New Zealand tlie indignant settlers
find that the twelvemonths' struggle has done
nothing for them except miscliicf, and can
see nothing in the proposed conditions of
peace to guarantee them against a repetition
of the conflict and its disastrous incidents,
?when they are less prepared for such occur- 1
renccs. The tone of the newspapers shows I
that they desire the continuance of hostilities
at a time when there is a large military force
on the ground, and bccause they know from
the dispatch of Sir Coknewai.l Lewis to
Mr Richmond, that it is not the intention
of the British Government to maintain a
standing army of five or six thousand men
permanently in New Zealand. They have
at this juncture five thousand regular soldiers,
and they therefore believe the present the
moment to strike some decisive blow. And
there is certainly no disputing tlie correct
ness of the opinion, provided it is by the
sword that any decisive result can be brought
about, of which fact, however, from recent
examples and from the peculiarities of the
country, and of the mode of warfare re
quired there, we must say wc still continue
exceedingly doubtful. But whatever
may be the consequences of a struggle
& I'oulrance — whether it turn out a brief
campaign rendering all things smooth with
out loss of time, or else a long drawn out
murderous guerilla contest, desolating other
colonies as well ns Taranaki, and replacing
the Maori in tlie woods in original and fero
cious barbarism — whichever may be the con
sequence, it is by every fresh batch of news
more and more unlikely that the proposals of
peace will comc to anything. For if the
settlers afc undoubtedly dissatisfied with the
tenor of Chose conditions, it would also seem
that the chief native tribe does not intend
to acccpt them.
We must now certainly, believe that the
? ? — ne ,..„o

premature. There is evidently a hitch in
the proceedings. Of its nature, or what it
amounts to, wc are not explicitly informed,
for there has been no official communication
on the subject; but from the remarks in
the Auckland journals it seems to be the
general impression that the authorities re
quire the removal of the native ' King,'
and the suppression of the King movement,
and that the Waikatos refuse to forego the
dream of independence, hopeless as they
must perccive it to be. It must not be
forgotten that to the three different sections
of the natives engaged in the war the Go
vernor offered three different sets of condi
tions. First, to the Ngatiawas, with whom
the quarrel originated about Teiha's land ;
and the}- have all accepted the terms pro
posed, 'excepting Wiremu Kingi, who

tunes -of. his allies, tho 'Waikato. From the
southern tribes — Taranaki and Ngataruanui
—who did the greater part of the desultory
buriiing and slaying, Governor Browne has
demanded restitution and compensation, as
well as submission. The larger portion
hare accordingly submitted and ' come in,'
but there are some, it appears, who still
prefer, like Wibemu Kiiror, to await the
issue of events in the north. As for the
'Waikatos, the bravest and most chivalric of
those clans — whose contingent bore the
brunt of the fighting and left the marauding
to others — it is supposed that the renunci
ation of his titular honors by King Pota
tau's successor was the main feature of the
terms offered them. The Governor, of
course, cannot brook the continuance of
such assertion of independence, and that,
too, at no great distance from the capital of
the colonies. But that the Waikatos are
foolish enough to refuse, would ap
pear to be evidenced by their pre

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tions wc have alluded to among their
southern allies, and by the gathering in
Auckland of the bulk of our army under
General Cameron-. And if the chief Maori
tribe is so mad as to persist in this attitude,
a general war all over the island is not
unlikely ; and that desperate battle of races,
heretofore only very partially realised.
Nevertheless, as there are sagacious leaders
at the native head-quarters — among others,
the chief whose English name is 'William
' Thompson,' and whose visit to Waitara
convinced his friends there of the hopeless
ness of further resistance— it is difficult to
believe that the tribe he belongs
to can have tlie rashness to compel
the presence on their own .ground of the
largest British army yet concentrated on a
New Zealand field. For whatever evil such

war might work the colonists, it would be
absolute ruin to Maori prospects. The very
first advance of so formidable a Pakeha force
would necessarily drive the Waikatos from
their pleasant farms along- .the great river
whose name they bear. It would destroy j
their property, and at once metamorphose 1
their position from that of prosperous hus- |
bandry to roaming savagery in the forests. :
They should, therefore, be little short of in
sane to provoke the British power too far.
Nor, on the other hand, can we believe that
the white settlers would find their interests
in a miich better position from a struggle
thus pushed to extremities. The colonies !
are not in one nook or corner -of the island, :
but scattered all round it ; and even under '
. better management than that in Taranaki the
regular army could net sentinel those strag- |
gling frontiers against the bands of native 1
foragers. From the almost impenetrable and
actually illimitable fastnesses of the woods
and mountains, an enemy, bold by nature
and desperate by circumstances, could issue |
at will to cany fire and tomahawk ' through
the settlements in the rear of the regiments 1
sent against him. And there is nothing in

the circumstances of the situation to prevent
our supposing that such a state of things
might not be continued for years.
The prime cause of all this New Zealand
trouble was the unlucky want of foresight
in selecting so many scattered sites for the
colonies. From experience in every other
new country it might have been foreseen
that future conflict between the native and
the white man was inevitable ; and as the
New Zealand natives are of so peculiarly
warlike a character, the position and relation
to each other for purposes of defence of the
various settlements should not have been
overlooked. But as the settlers were allowed,
without a word of warning, to plant them
selves wherever they' could obtain land — in
localities ever so much asunder along the
coasts— the Home Government have now to I
look after the protection of all those out- '
lying posts, and to support the wars so easily
created by the contact of opposing races
under such circumstances. That was mis- '
take the first of the Colonial Office. Mis*
take the second lies in the fact that the
means of protection provided by Govern
ment for such colonies as New Zealand
are not those practically suitable or origi

nally intended for any such purpose. To
transact the wild bush fighting of an anti
podal wilderness the home authorities have
only regiments trained and equipped for the
operations of regular warfare — organised for
service against European strategists like
Soult or Gortciiakofe, but not against
such Will-'o-the-Wisp or Robin IIood
antagonists as John Heki or Wi Ivingi.
Our captains and our soldiers are all intended
and schooled for old world fields and scien
tific campaigning ; and as the requirements
of the new world situation are so very different
we cannot wonder that sapping his pahs and
moving in solid column through his bush
should fail to humble a Maori foe. Despite
all the dash and obstinate valor of our
soldiery, drilled and appointed as they
are, to disperse them guerilla fashion in
the face of such an enemy is to place them
at every disadvantage. For, thanks to love
of routine in the Horse Guards, the British
army is still modelled exclusively- on the old
eighteenth century pattern. The French,
on the contrary, have their eyes open in
such matters. In their African campaigns
they found it no easy business to cope with
the agile Kabyle among his inaccessible
rocks, and so they resolved to render some
of their own regiments as nimble in move
ment and as well adapted in equipment and
discipline to such loose warfare. They first
tried the experiment with native soldiers,
and the Zouaves received the name from the
native tribe of whose members those batta
lions were originally composed. But the
French generals, ere long, began to ask
themselves if it was not quite possible to
render European soldiers, by proper manage
ment, just as personally active, and to the
full as expert and as much at home among
the obstacles of nature as the wild sons of
the mountain or desert. They tried the
plan, and it succeeded. The gamin picked
up in the streets of Paris, or the Breton or

iricarci peasant ueuvcrea irom tnc piougn
tail, was rendered, by gymnastic manage
ment, as much a savage in natural soundness
of wind and flexibility of limb as his wild fore
fatliers'-vrho followed Brennus or encountered
CiKSAR. And with appropriate discipline
and ease of costume those . battalions could
attack the Russians on the top of precipitous
cliffs at the Alma, and the Austrians across
unfordable canals at Magenta, as effectively
as they did the Atlas mountaineer in his
fastnesses. Now, there is no light infantry
— on this pattern, or in the proper sense —
in the British army — the system makes n'o
provision for it ; and yet the physique of the
various races from which our army is raised
is surely as susceptible of the gymnastic
training which can alone enable civilised
man to be a match in the wilderness for such
opponents as the Kabyle or the Maori.
We do not know whether those New
Zealand incidents may open the eyes of the
authorities to the serious deficiency suffered
to remain unremedied in their military system.
But it is only by such light .forces, as we
say, that a New Zealand war can ever be
conducted with real efficiency. And if,
unfortunately, hostilities are indeed about to
recommence, there will need to be some
immediate re-organisation of our soldiery
there for the requirements and exigencies
of bush fighting, as well as a different style
of generalship from that heretofore pursued.
Let us hope, however, that the march of i
events -will not after all occasion any such 1
present necessity in that quarter. We have ,
enough of sympathy with a gallant, and in J
many respects, gifted aboriginal people, to
sincerely desire that no renewed conflict
with our arms may accelerate . their dis
appearance or interrupt that progress in
civilisation they have already attained.

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