SOUTH AKKRA — AND THE UNDERGRADUATE. Z6l 



specific University course, no professional Chairs of Native 

 Languages, no National Schools of Administration where our 

 young aspirants, if they yet exist, may be instructed and dis- 

 ciplined, and where they can obtain even rudimentary notions of 

 what they have to do. Are we surprised then that amid such 

 indifference in high quarters our Undergraduate has given this, 

 the first of South African fields, no serious attention? Are we 

 surprised then that he still holds the idea that the White Man 

 is one creation, the Native another, and that each moves and has 

 his being in a different sphere, as though they were not inhabi- 

 tants of one and the same country, and as though their interests 

 were not inter-dependent? We must detach him from this very 

 superior attitude and get him to see things in their true propor- 

 tion. It was the attitude of the French Aristocrats that sent 

 them in 1789 either to the guillotine or into exile. The French 

 nobles had failed in their National duties ; our Undergraduate 

 must not fail in his. We must give him practical assistance. 

 Mow? We have urged the need of establishing colleges right in 

 the heart of our Native Territories where, as part of his Uni- 

 versity course, our young administrator — to be — can be sent for 

 some three months per annum to study the man on the spot — to 

 master his language, to watch his ways, to get some under- 

 standing of how his mind works. The practical value of such 

 an early training cannot be over-estimated. One of our distin- 

 guished Native Administrators, whose knowledge of Native 

 Affairs is unrivalled, went through the course we have suggested. 

 Whenever he is asked to what he owes his success in Native 

 Administration, he answers : " To my knowledge of the Native 

 gained in my boyhood on the benches of Lovedale.'' 



Apart from the study, in vestigio, of the Native and his 

 language it is outside the scope of this paper to suggest the lines 

 the training of our young consul should follow. But if the aim 

 of all our Administration be to lay down in the Native Terri- 

 tories the principles of constitutional government, even in the 

 Village Council, and to foster first and foremost all agricultural 

 and pastoral industries, the lines of his studies become manifest. 

 Let us guard against the grave mistake of zealously attempting 

 to graft all at once the advantages of a twentieth-century civilisa- 

 tion upon the Native. We are too apt to forget that the forces 

 of natural evolution move slowly, and that any attempt to hurry 

 Nature's laws can only be attended with disaster. 



In Conclusion. 



We are a young Nation ; let us rejoice in our youth. Let 

 us not forget that the history of the Undergraduate is the history 

 of the Race. There is no Undergraduate who is not blessed with 

 rich potentialities for good, and who at the same time has not 

 inherited some latent tendencies to evil. He is but human. If 

 good were as untiring in its activties as the forces for evil are 

 sleepless, all would be well. We who are cognisant of evil, who 



