A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE 415 



on whose hearts the charm and terror of Africa have laid their 

 spell, even if sometimes they have sadly lost faith in the 

 creeds of their childhood, hold him for what he is the 

 real saviour of the Africa of the future. 



He has been her true discoverer. He opened the dark 

 places to the day. No man has so good a right as he to a 

 voice in her government. Our present day materialism 

 has small understanding of the missionary, but surely his 

 own will come to him. He is the idealist of Africa. A 

 man's work is, as it were, the perishable body of him; after 

 a few years the body wears out, only the ideas he gave 

 forth, the living, detachable seeds of him, as it were, remain. 

 Where would the world be to-day but for ideas? Jewish 

 ideas, Greek ideas, Italian ideas, English ideas ? Who 

 cares or knows anything of the mere fortune-builders of old 

 time, or even of those who led hosts to slaughter in those 

 ten thousand battles of long ago ? Yet in our so-called 

 materialistic century, men pour out treasure or eagerly cross 

 sea and land if only they may learn a little of those great 

 ones who gave ideas to men. Their memory is revered, 

 their words written, their pictures painted, the statues they 

 hewed, the cathedrals or towers they builded, are our price- 

 less possessions to-day. 



Adventure and traffic in Africa has too often brutalized 

 those who pursued them. Colonists cannot be trusted to 

 safeguard the rights of those whom, at least in part, they 

 have come to dispossess. Between the colonial adventurer 

 and the native, stands the disinterested, self-sacrificing 

 missionary. He should, in the best interests of the country 

 he knows, have a far more influential voice than he now has, 

 in formulating its laws and outlining its policy. 



If "blood is the price of admiralty/' as Kipling says, who 

 has better earned his right to a voice in the council of the 

 land of his adoption than he ? Pensions and honour may 

 await the successful soldier. Some recognition, however 



