Presidential Address. 137 



tell the tale. Still, when that sentiment no longer pervades the heart 

 of a nation, it is on the down grade, and must give place to some 

 more virile and patriotic people. The political problem for South 

 Africa, to the solution of which the section over w^hich I have the 

 honour to preside will be one of the chief ancillaries, is that of turning 

 its people into a nation. That has already been achieved in the 

 case of Canada, and virtually so in Australia. The best exponent 

 of this process is Mr. Richard Jebb, whose book on this topic should 

 be the vade niccum of every one of our South African statesmen and 

 educators. It is now some thirty years since Lord Carnarvon made 

 his famous attempt to impose Federation artificially upon us from 

 without, but this, as bitter experience has shown, is, like the King- 

 dom of Heaven, within us or is nowhere at all. Now I am one of 

 those who are robust believers in the not-far-distant realisation of 

 this (ht^rished ideal, and it grieves me to have to say that according 

 to my poor lights, our greatest modern South African, Cecil Rhodes, 

 lost a golden opportunity of accelerating the hands of the clock in 

 this regard. Pace Sir Lewis Michell, I count it as little short of 

 a national calamity that instead of sending home a scratch lot of 

 Colonists to learn to run and jump imperially, he did not carry out 

 his original and pious project of devoting his colossal fortune to 

 the foundation and endowment of a teaching University under the 

 shadow of Table Mountain, or on some other central site. For one 

 man who will lend himself generously to the precious influence of 

 the genius loci of Oxford, there would have been scores of young 

 South Africans carrying away with them from a local teaching 

 University into every corner of the sub-continent the spirit of 

 camaraderie and the priceless germs of national aspirations. T have 

 long watched with pleasure the great work that the South African 

 College has already been able to do in this respect. A very valuable 

 contribution to the literature of this subject has been recently made 

 bv Professor Hertz, of the Transvaal University College, in his 

 paper on "The Functions of the Modern University."* It is the 

 most up-to-date utterance on this all-important theme that I have 

 come across. Thanks to the energy and ability of the Superintendents 

 nf Fducation in the different Colonies, a complete supply of primary 

 instruction is all but an accomplished fact, but our secondary schools 

 are still in w\ant of the coping-stone that a local teaching University 

 would have provided. With this primary instruction, the first rung 

 in the ladder of efficiency for citizenship will be attained, when 

 every child is able to gain knowledge from reading, and to expre.ss 

 its thoughts in writing, with enough of the remaining of the " three 

 R's " to be able to say what change is due when a half-crown has 

 been tendered in payment of a debt of, say, is. ii%d. I am not 

 sure, however, if the peculiar environments in which our lot in this 

 sub-continent is cast should not, for a time, at least, incline us 

 rather to revert to the old Persian " three R's," namely, riding, 

 shooting and truth-telling. Here, perhaps, as much as elsewhere, 

 truth is at the bottom of the well. Our tropical climate tends to 



