The New Zealand forces, organised for the Maori Wars after the regular British regiments had been withdrawn from the operations, contained perfect frontier soldiers who outfought the Maori in his native wilds and brought lasting peace to the borderlands. The senior surviving officer of that hard-fighting corps, the New Zealand Armed Constabulary Field Force, was the late Colonel J. M. Roberts, N.Z.C., the subject of this biographical sketch. He began his military career in the celebrated Forest Rangers, with Von Tempsky, hero of many a deed of daring in our country's adventurous age.

The stories of courage and endurance in New Zealand's dangerous days can never be told too often. They are a perpetual incentive to a spirit of duty, bravery and self-sacrifice. Maori and Pakeha rightly share in the admiration felt for such deeds of valour. They were the heroes of combat in the days when war was still a chivalrous affair, fought at close quarters, and when the human factor had not yet been submerged by the diabolical contrivances of scientific wholesale slaughter.

John Mackintosh Roberts, who began his soldiering life by carrying carbine and bowie-knife in No. 2 Company of Forest Rangers in the early part of the Waikato War, and who lived through innumerable bush-fighting perils to become Colonel commanding the Armed Constabulary, was probably the most admirable figure of all in the list of colonial soldiers who won the New Zealand Cross for deeds of exceptional valour. He was particularly distinguished for his cool courage and resourcefulness in emergency. More than once he extricated his men from seemingly hopeless positions by his excellent bush-craft and his confidence-inspiring leadership. His military career extended over about a quarter of a century, and he was for more than ten years a Magistrate, with his headquarters at Tauranga. Many of his comrades in the war years were men who had learned their trade in British regiments, and who adapted themselves to the conditions of bush-fighting here. Roberts learned his bushmanship and his military craft in his youth in the New Zealand forest. In the earlier Maori wars the British commanders dreaded the bush, and cut away the timber in order to get at the enemy. That was not the way of the colonial soldier who knew his business. “We learned very early,” said Roberts to the present writer, “to look on a tree as a friend. If it could shelter a Maori it could also shelter us.” So in the later campaigns pakeha fought Maori quite in the Maori manner, skirmishing from tree to tree, adopting ambush and surprise tactics, and taking to the Maori bush costume and wearing shawl or blanket kilt-fashion, like the native rapaki, instead of trousers.