xX PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
on secondary education that means, as we have so few 
rich residents in Queensland, that only about 3 per annum of 
all these students are going to complete their work? Why 
go on so far only to drop practically everything ? The 
answer that has hitherto been received is generally that it 
would cost too much. But it would cost nothing, and 
possibly result in a saving of money and certainly of the 
pupils’ time, were the work of the Grammar Schools made 
as strictly continuous as possible on that of the primary 
State Schools, and students entering the public or State 
Technical institutions required to show their fitness to par- 
take of the mental food presented. Such a course has been 
found necessary elsewhere, and will, I trust, soon be adopted 
here. It would be a very great mistake indeed to attempt 
to put on the crown of all educational systems—the 
University, ere the primary and secondary schools were 
properly corelated. With primary and secondary schools 
in working order the establishment of the University 
would be greatly facilitated. We would have hundreds of 
students ready to take advantage of the University 
immediately it was opened. 
Very many hard words have been used against past 
Governments for refusing to go to the expense of establish- 
ing a University. I suppose they were deserved, as the 
enormous benefits to be derived by Queensland from a 
University would completely justify any Government in 
spending the money. But in one way the Governments 
had a very good excuse indeed for not spending the money. 
There has never been a general demand by the people for 
a University, and knowing that, successive Governments 
have refused to take action. We are sadly in want of a 
Horace Mann in Queensland, some one who will go 
round, as he did in Massachusetts, U.S.A., finding everywhere 
absolute apathy and unconcern as to educational facilities, 
and leaving behind him boundless energy and enthusiasm 
in the good cause. Once open the eyes of the people of 
Queensland to the danger of the future through bringing 
up our young people practically uneducated, to compete 
with the trained skill of the foreigner, and the University 
question will solve itself. Any Government that got a 
mandate from the people to complete the system of State 
