254 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA 
African Hall is to be done at all, it must be done now. 
And even if it is done now, we must have men to do 
it who have known Africa for at least a quarter of a 
century. Africa to-day is a modern Africa, the 
Africa of the Age of Man. Africa then was still the 
Africa of the Age of Mammals, a country sufficiently 
untouched by civilization to give a vivid impression 
of Africa a hundred years ago. By the time the 
groups are in place in African Hall, some of the species 
represented will have disappeared. Naturalists and 
scientists two hundred years from now will find there 
the only existent record of some of the animals which 
to-day we are able to photograph and to study in 
the forest environment. African Hall will tell the 
story of jungle peace, a story that is sincere and faith- 
ful to the African beasts as I have known them, and it 
will, I hope, tell that story so convincingly that the 
traditions of jungle horrors and impenetrable forests 
may be obliterated. 
With all haste, when the war was over, I turned 
again to African Hall—to Roosevelt African Hall, for 
naturally after the death of that great American who 
so deeply desired to bring to the world a knowledge of 
beautiful Africa and who had himself shot the old 
cow for the elephant group, we gave the proposed 
hall his name. The thought that my greatest under- 
taking was to stand as a memorial to Theodore 
Roosevelt doubled my incentive. I am giving the 
best there is in me to make Roosevelt African Hall 
worthy of the name it bears. 
The structure itself will be of imposing dimensions. 
