XXVili. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
an exciting game with one chance in a hundred of being 
killed, he would have about ninety-nine chances of 
being killed. It certainly would make war as now 
conducted impossible. With a comparatively few shells 
filled with suitable compressed gas and suitable big guns 
to throw them, 50 men could annihilate an army. And 
why should they not do so? War is wholesale murder, 
so if it is to be murder let it be done as quickly and pain- 
lessly as possible. I trust that some great nation will soon 
give notice that if any other power attacks it this method 
will be used in defence. That will do more to end war than 
all the peace conferences that could be held in 100 years. 
It would look wasteful to throw so many millions of pounds 
worth of war material on the scrap heap, but better throw 
the money there than the men. 
Much more might be said on the benefits of thorough 
education—its “ socialistic” tendency (not in the political 
partisan sense) and in a hundred other ways. 
I have tried, in however imperfect a way, to show the 
very backward position in which we are in Queensland 
with regard to education. I have quoted no statistics as 
to money spent elsewhere. We have heard and read those 
over and over again. I would like again to say in reply to 
the hackneyed cry of our poverty as our excuse that it is 
because we have no system of education that we are poor. 
What nations have now the best educational system ? 
Undoubtedly Germany and America, and they are also 
making greatest progress in commerce. New Zealand has 
the best educational system in Australasia, and New Zealand 
is the most prosperous State in Australasia. Can anyone 
honestly say that we, the richest State in the world if we 
consider the natural resources per head of population, 
cannot raise even £10,000 a year for a University ? 
I think I have said quite sufficient to show that not 
only is the scholar interested in the establishment of a 
University, but that it is a matter of the deepest concern 
to every one in the State; and not only to establish it as 
part of a system, but to see that provision is made that every 
youth in Queensland who has shown capacity for receiving 
a higher education shall have opportunity given to receive 
the best education that can possibly be provided, Poverty 
