114 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION E. 



commentary upon it ; they marvelled that he knew their own 

 books better than they did themselves. We want more men 

 trained thus fully for their special work ; then should we find 

 no lack of trained administrators and missionaries as experienced 

 contributors to ethnology, far better than the scientific visitor 

 who has not the confidence oi the particular tribe. 



If we were thus learners as well as teachers, how many 

 solecisms in translation, how many mistakes in policy we might 

 avoid, which alike proclaim our systems alien (externally, though 

 not fundamentally). We have no difficulty in realising the point 

 with our fellow white-men. We know that we must enter into 

 their lives, and the more thoroughly, that is, the more scientifi- 

 cally, the better. We do not need to live all their lives, as we 

 need not, nor are able, to live a native's, but we need to study 

 the lives scientifically, alongside of the language, and until we 

 do so we deserve to be ousted by others who will. 



One day I happened to mention the names of some of his 

 ancestors to the son of a chief of the Batlokoa who was visiting. 

 In a few weeks three pages of foolscap arrived filled with a 

 neat though elaborate genealogy which I could largely verify, 

 and which went back nearly 30 generations (probably something 

 over 600 years). There was confidence established, and the 

 native shyness broken down by an interest shown in their his- 

 tory. As a high government official points out in Mr. Hollis's 

 excellent book on the Masai, a genuine interest in the native 

 mind and language is one of the most hopeful ways of avoiding 

 even punitive expeditions. 



If all that I have said is true of the missionary, surely it is 

 true also, if not more true, of the administrator and his assis- 

 tants. How true also it has been in this war that often all has 

 depended on such intelligence and staff work, and indeed the 

 principle has long been recognised in the navy, so far as the 

 encouragement of language study is concerned ; yet a recent num- 

 ber of the English Rczneiv gives a case of a loss at sea costing 

 the country £3,000,000, due to ignorance on the part of an 

 officer of the distinction in sound between German and Nor- 

 wegian. I could give many examples of similar mistakes in 

 native tongues, often laughable enough, but too frequent to be 

 amusing, seeing the estrangement which their cause in the long 

 run brings between ruled and ruler, teacher and taught. 



VII. 



This is the case with us English in the matter especially of 

 philology, in spite of the fact that the science deals with speech, 

 the prerogative of man alone, the chief interpreter of the mind, 

 and therefore the chief interpreter of man to man. Yet this is 

 the science which we carefully avoid. Though near a century 

 and a half has gone by since the derided discovery of Sanscrit 

 as the key to European tongues, instead of Hebrew or what not. 

 philology is still commonly considered a mark of the faddist, or 



