200 SOUTH AFRICA AND THE UNDERGRADUATE. 



( i ) There are many thousands of white children in South 

 Africa who are receiving not even the rudiments of an Element- 

 ary Education. 



( ii ) There are two hundred thousand Native and Coloured 

 children on the School Registers of South Africa, and they are 

 keen at least upon learning to read — and the Native press is 

 growing daily more and more vigorous. 



( iii ) Eighty per cent, of our White children leave school 

 after passing Standard IV. 



When we calmly consider these facts, then we say that 

 forces are at work which will have a telling effect before many 

 years have passed. We must not forget that the Native press 

 appeals to a mind by nature prone to holding indabas, whose 

 theme will be, and is, the Rights of Man. Their writers will 

 effect a revolution not by an appeal to the sword but by con- 

 stitutional measures and by sheer force of economic pressure. 

 " A wild dream," say some. But not so wild or so distant as it 

 seems. 



Why is it that our young South African of ability leaves 

 Education as a profession severely alone ? " Education," ex- 

 claimed a Professor, " is the Cinderella of all professions." The 

 Professor is wrong. Education is no Cinderella in Germany 

 or in Scotland. It is a Cinderella only in those countries whose 

 men are blind to big issues. It is a Cinderella in South Africa. 

 The South African Undergraduate has a rare opportunity of 

 lifting South African Education from its present position of 

 impecunious respectability to a social, and incidentally a finan- 

 cial, status that will attract the able sons of our able men to 

 devote themselves to its cause. And if, as we have shown, there 

 be a country that stands in need of such devotion,' such disciple- 

 ship. South Africa is that country. " Had I ten sons," said Mr. 

 David Naude, " of whom each wished to be a teacher, I would 

 give them all with both hands." The old gentleman was wise. 

 He foresaw what most of his brethren have failed to see. He 

 foresaw that Education alone, based upon South African needs 

 and inspired by South African ideals, was the only means to 

 solve our National problems. South Africa should regard the 

 Education of her sons as the soundest investment of her capital, 

 and not hold " so noble a profession, so sorry a trade " in so 

 melancholy a position that it is regarded as the last resource of 

 the son with brains and the first resource of the fool of the 

 family. 



B. Native Administration. — The part our Undergraduate 

 has to play in the administration of Native affairs has received 

 no consideration from our University or Ministerial authorities. 

 The fact that South Africa looks among the rising generation 

 for the future rulers of her Native Races is not yet understood. 

 There exists, apparently, no correlation between University work 

 and preparation for Native administration: at least we have no 



