58 



SECTION 111. 

 FINANCE. 



CHAPTER X. 

 The Budget and the Tropics before the War. 



A ^195,000,000 Pre-war Budget, but not a Cent for 

 Tropical Medicine and Education. 



Tropical Life, Mciy, 1913. 



" A proposal deserving to be heartily supported is that 

 of Professor Diinstan for the estabHshment of a tropical 

 school of agriculture. The time is very proper for this 

 step to be taken. Until within very recent years the 

 Tropics exacted a heavy sacrifice from the able and 

 promising young men who went out to them. Either they 

 died at their posts or they came back broken in health and 

 constitutioiL The schools of tropical medicine have gone 

 far to achieve a complete victory over the adverse climatic 

 conditions, so that operations can now be carried on where 

 formerly they were impossible. Thus energetic and 

 ambitious youths have a wider field open to them. At 

 the same time there has been a great development in the 

 growing of rubber plantations, which, with tea-planting, 

 has become a very important form of tropical agriculture. 

 These industries are both carried on in Ceylon, and in 

 that island there is already a nucleus of what might 

 become an Imperial college of tropical agriculture. 

 Professor Dunstan suggests that Ceylon is, ' on the whole, 

 the country best suited for the establishment of this 

 college.' Tlie idea would be for the student to undergo a 

 course of training at one of the English agricultural 

 colleges, and then follow it by one in tropical agriculture."' 



' Sir Henry McCallum, ex-Governor of Ceylon, also strongly supported 

 the claims of that Island in an able letter to the 'limes of May 12. We 

 feel, therefore, row that East and West have both had their cause fully 

 and carefully laid before the Government and the public, it is for them to 

 see which centre should have the first college, until, we hope, in the near 

 future, each will have its College of Agriculture. 



