PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION D. 39 



If people complain to-day of the want of that old-time rever- 

 ence and respect towards parents and elders, may we not justly 

 attribute the fault to those parents who shirk the responsibility of 

 training- their children themselves, and hand them over entireh 

 to the management of the State and its servants? 



In conclusion. I must give feeling to a very great disappoint- 

 ment and regret. The country has been through a time of great 

 trial and trouble, and a new nation is supposed to have emerged 

 shining and triumphant from the ordeal. In all history such a 

 nation-birth has ever been signalised by a great outburst of 

 literary and intellectual activity. Here in South Africa we look 

 for it in vain. This fact 1 attribute partly to the gross material- 

 ism which is affecting South Africa no less than other countries, 

 to the desire to get rich first and become great afterwards, and 

 pkrtly to the deplorable quarrel over languages. 



There are problems of wonderful moment and of almost 

 horrible fascination before this century. Man, as a recent writer 

 has said, is always grasping in his hands more than he can 

 imagine in his mind. The greatest discoveries are too wonderful 

 even for the imagination to foretell. The prolongation of living, 

 either by increasing through curative medicine the average age- 

 limit of man or by a system of sterilised rest and abeyance of the 

 still living organism for long periods of quiescence ; the pre- 

 determination of sex ; the conquest of the air, not by machines, 

 but by flying human beings; the victory over mental and physical 

 disease ; the production of an increasing food supply ; the dis- 

 coverv and necessary limiting of almost omnipotent engines or 

 methods of destroying life; the destruction of property ; the 

 political and social status of black or Coloured citizens; the State 

 elimination of all immoral tendency — these are some of the pro- 

 blems before the thinkers and writers of to-day. 



In the solution of these world problems we in South Africa 

 must take our share, not necessarily as brilliant discoverers, but 

 by patient research each in his own sphere. Our President (Dr. 

 Theiler), by his brilliant researches into animal infection, has 

 shown what, can be done in the way of combating disease. In 

 mining engineering I do not think that our Johannesburg mem- 

 bers will be surpassed as regards daring, skill and economy by 

 any engineers in the world. 



But are all those other problems so easy of solution in one 

 language that we must fetter ourselves with more than one? Is 

 it so easy for a nation to be great in one tongue that our mis- 

 guided, if earnest-minded, politicians are asking us to be great in 

 two? 



