38 



TROPICAL EDUCATION. 



know liow the vast majority of the human ra(!f3 Hlill hvo 

 and move unci liave their beiiif,', and to feel that after all 

 their mode of life, though lacking in Greek iambics, wall- 

 papers, and the Saturday licvietv, yet appeals in its own 

 beach-comberish way to some of one's inmost and deepest 

 yearnings. The hibiscus that flames before the wattled 

 hut, the parrot that chatters from the green and golden 

 mango-tree, the lithe, healthy figures of the children in 

 the stream, are some compensation for the lack of 

 London mud, London fog, and London illustrations of 

 practical Christianity in the Isle of Dogs and the Ber- 

 mondsey purlieus. I don't know whether I am knocking 

 the last nail into the completed cofiin of my own conten- 

 tion, but I believe every right-minded man returns from 

 the Tropics a good deal more of a Communist than when 

 he went there. 



One word of explanation to prevent mistake. I am 

 not myself, like Kingsley or Wallace, an enthusiastic 

 tropicist. On the contrary, viewed as a place of per- 

 manent residence, I don't at all like the Tropics to live 

 in. I am pleading here only for their educational value, 

 in small doses. Spending two or three years there in 

 the heydey of life is very much like reading Herodotus— 

 a thing one is glad one had once to do, but one would 

 never willingly do again for any money. We northern 

 creatures are remote products of the Great Ice Age, and 

 by this time, like Polar bears, we have grown adapted to 

 our '"lacial environment. All the more, therefore, is it a 

 useful shaking-up for us to get transported bodily from 

 our cramped and poverty-stricken northern slums, just 

 once in our life, to the palms and temples of the South, 



