Chapter XXVII 



WHAT WILL THE WHITE MAN DO NEXT? 



Radio has stirred the imagination of millions of people 

 in both Europe and America, and opened up unexplored 

 possibilities quite unrivalled in the history of science, 

 amongst masses of people to whom the world of books 

 was before almost unknown. But in Africa Radio is a 

 voice in the wilderness, heralding a new order of edu- 

 cation in the evolution of the African. The significance 

 of the new science of radio-telephony as a means of 

 distributing news and for the purpose of providing 

 recreation is already well known, but when radio is 

 fully applied to countries where reading is almost un- 

 heard of, it will have a new and deeper significance. 

 There are vast tracts of land in Equatorial Africa where 

 newspapers do not exist, and where the only news is 

 carried by word of mouth, or by drum signals from hill 

 to hill. Millions of the inhabitants are entirely illiterate, 

 so that even if it were possible to print and distribute 

 newspapers, they would be useless. 



Broadcasting, although it does not supplant journal- 

 ism, acts very much in the same way. If that is true, 

 even to a limited degree, in the countries of Western 

 civilization, imagine how broadcasting will affect vast 



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