A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE 411 



the familiar rolls of canvas hung down before me covered 

 with the natural-history illustrations of my youth. The 

 flowers, fishes, vegetables and animals of England were all 

 there, after their well-known and somewhat inaccurately 

 depicted sort of English! I wanted to see Uganda. There 

 was one concession only to the tropics, that I could see 

 an American alligator was made to do service for an African 

 crocodile, a very different sort of saurian, indeed. 



I criticized these schoolroom posters then and there, 

 but was told it would cost too much to reproduce the flowers, 

 vegetables, or animals of the country. But the whole thing 

 saddened me, for it showed to my mind a total lack of 

 appreciation of the real education that these people need. 

 A slight knowledge of drawing, a little clever use of the 

 camera, might have made these fine schoolroom walls 

 tell another and a far more interesting story to the boys 

 who were one day to rule Uganda. 



III. Industrial education cannot be given to the nomad. 

 Most true, and it is for that reason and in his own 

 interests, that the East African must, therefore, for a long 

 time to come, be firmly and wisely made to do what 

 he ought to do. 



I know well that such a statement is at once greeted by 

 indignant outcries. The philanthropists, the theorists, the 

 public interested in East Africa but actually uninformed 

 about it, will have none of it. The opponents of forced 

 labour in any form and under any circumstances wax ignor- 

 antly eloquent. But outcries do not alter facts. The man 

 who is not fit to be his own master must be put under the 

 mastership of someone else, or he will perish from the earth. 



Some sort of forced labour is absolutely necessary. No 

 savage ever did (or ever will) in any age or in any land, work 

 systematically unless he was obliged to. The African is no 

 exception to the universal rule, and he must be made to 

 work there not only to develop the country, but to save 



