president's address. 9 



are here to remain, and are settled along the lines which will be 

 preserved for a long time to come. It has taken practically all 

 the period since the Dutch occupancy in 1652 to effect this settle- 

 ment, and in the process racial strife has at times been aroused. 

 Enmity engendered by warfare has now happily ceased, and any 

 present manifestations of discontent are fundamentally socio- 

 logical; they are such as might well be expected to arise in the 

 mutual relationships of a superior race and an inferior one, the 

 latter outnumbering the former four or five times. Harsh, 

 unsympathetic treatment and exploitation have also been meted 

 out by the white to the black under the struggles incidental to the 

 founding of a new country. But, however unjustifiable, South 

 Africa has in this no more than followed the treatment which 

 during the past centuries has almost everywhere characterised the 

 relationships between inferior and superior races. This general 

 attitude was manifested in its extreme form in slavery, an institu- 

 tion which until last century was held to be justifiable by all 

 countries and all peoples. South Africa, however, never enslaved 

 its own natives. 



Within the present century more particularly, any harsh, 

 suppressive attitude towards the lower races has largely passed 

 away in South Africa, to be replaced by one in which just and 

 humane considerations are in the ascendant. In spirit, at any 

 rate, the attitude is far removed from that which Lord Bryce 

 described in 1897, in his "Impressions of South Africa." The 

 change of ideals has been gradual as regards the mass of the people, 

 and has perhaps lagged behind in the Transvaal and the Orange 

 Free State, as compared with the Cape Province. To the mission- 

 aries must be given the credit of leading the way, though in their 

 early doctrine of brotherhood and equality they displayed no sound 

 appreciation of the real fundamental differences of race and all 

 that they imply. I wish to lay stress upon this change of attitude 

 of the white towards the black in South Africa. It is correctly 

 exemplified by the public utterances of practically all our states- 

 men, notably General Smuts and before him the late General 

 Botha, by the regard paid by the Municipalities to the welfare 

 of the natives in Locations, as disclosed by the Municipal Congress 

 this year in Cape Town; by the appointment of the Commission 

 to guide and advise on Native Affairs, and by the establishment 

 of a University Professorship of Social Anthropology to study the 

 question with all the resources which science can command. It 

 is this change of attitude and the obligations it entails which 

 introduce so many new problems. How shall we best apply our 

 sympathetic ideals in practice, and what is likely to be the result 

 in the future ? We can do just as much harm as good if we do 

 not proceed on right lines, having due regard to innate racial 

 peculiarities and to the interests of all concerned. 



In a country which has undergone so many internal dis- 

 turbances as South Africa, legislative efforts on behalf of the 

 native may well lag behind desire ; but in all directions an earnest 

 effort is now manifest to cope with them. We have, however, to 



