96 PIIESIDK.XTIAL ADDUESS SECTION E. 



of the problem, a problem which is raiying so much anxiety in the 

 mind« oi th(Hightlul men; and this southern land, I think, has 

 more of these per thousand of the population than any other 

 corner of God's earth. And the reason for that intellectual alive- 

 ness is just this very array of problems of race, labour and 

 climate, which our people have continually to face. So, after all, 

 perhaps, the race problems, and the labour questions, and the 

 iiandicaps of drought and disease are really blessings. 



But to return more pertinently to the matter on hand. 

 Among the four or five aspects of the Native problem which may 

 be considered immediate and pressing, the following may be 

 i/egarded as worthy of our closest consideration : 



(1) The changes in national life and mental attitude due to 

 the passing of the old tribal system of government, based as It 

 distinctively was on a communal idea of national relationship. 



(2) The immigration of the Native into industrial areas and 

 the changes in habit and in outlook due to this immigration. 



(3) The character and direction of Native Education. 



(4) The possibility of the extension of opportunities of work 

 for educated Natives. 



(5) Their political future. 



1. The changes in national life and mental attitude due 

 to the passing of the old tribal system of governr 

 me}it , based as it distinctively was on a communal 

 idea of national relatio)if>hip. 



Although racial changes take place verj^ slowly, and racial 

 mental characteristics are to some extent as permanent as the 

 physical features of a race — some writers think more so — at 

 times a sudden economic change, or the alteration of one's sky 

 (Horace notwithstanding) will bring to pass, in a brief century, 

 a more altered state of things for a race than the previous 

 thousand years of their history have witnessed. Take, for instance, 

 the change brought about in England and Scotland by the great 

 industrial development of a century and a half ago. In a few 

 years a large proportion of the people passed over from one 

 economic age to another, from individualism to collectivism, from 

 simple primitive occupations to being parts of a vast industrial 

 machine. It was a new England that arose out of the new con- 

 ditif)ns. Then, again, a nation like Japan moves down untold years 

 tranquilly and untouched by change; suddenly there bursts upon 

 it, like a geological cataclysm, a great tidal wave of progress, 

 submerging under its watens much of the old condition of things. 

 In ten years the past of ten centuries is almost washed away. 



Change cannot be measured by years. It is not the inert 

 static condition of mind and manners of a race that means so 

 much in the way of change or the reverse, but rather the quality 

 and quantity of the dynamical forces acting on that mind and 

 those manners. True, some Natives are more conservative than 

 others, but no amount of conservatism will stand the steady 

 wearing down pressure of outside influences. 



