Educational Aim in South Africa. 197 



And in this field the same cautions have to be observed that we have 

 noted in the smaller sphere of the school. In this country of South 

 Africa, the sentiment of patriotism has to be purged from much that 

 tends to narrow and' limit it. I shall not be accused of touching on 

 controversial politics if I plead for the cultivation in our young 

 people of a love for South Africa as a whole. The barriers of 

 prejudice as between State and State, and race and race, must be 

 broken down, and a corporate sentiment kindled for the history of 

 this country as a whole, and in relation to the World's history, 

 a pride in the struggles and sacrifices and the victorious deeds of all 

 the races of our people, and an ambition to see that all the energy 

 and devotion once wasted in conflict, shall in the future be united 

 to carry forward this country to higher things than could ever have 

 been achieved in rivalry and disunion. We must see that the narrow 

 view that has warped the minds of more than one section of our 

 people, tending to restrict to one side or tlie other the right of 

 inheritance in all that has been so dearly bought and built up, shall 

 be done away with, and that the noble sentiment of patriotism shall 

 not be debased, as with the Jews of old, into a barren pride in blood 

 privilege. 



It is the training of the girls in particular that much of the 

 success of this work will depend. It is the privilege of the woman 

 to enter with her whole heart into the history she reads, and to 

 inspire her children with a sentiment that moves them, throughout 

 life, more strongly than any other. Let the feeling she inculcates 

 be a true patriotism and not prejudice. 



There is a noble passage in Russell Lowell's essay on Democracy 

 with which I will conclude : — 



" The true value of a country must be weighed in scales more 

 delicate than the balance of trade. . . . On a map of the 

 world vou mav cover Judea with vnur thumb and Athens with 

 a finger tip, and neither of them figures in the prices current ; 

 but they still lord it in the thought and action of every civilised 

 man. . . . Material success is good, but only as the neces- 

 sarv preliminary to greater things. The true measure of a 

 nation's success is the amount thnt it has contributed to the 

 knowledge, the moral energy, the intellectual happiness, the 

 spiritual hope and consolation of mankind. There is no other. 

 let our randidates flatter us as thev mav." 



