104 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
tribute of unstinted admiration for the disinterested and 
efficient work being done, alike in the interest of the white 
man and the black, by the government officials whom I 
met in East Africa. They are men in whom their country 
has every reason to feel a just pride. 
We lunched with the American missionaries. Mission 
work among savages offers many difficulties, and often the 
wisest and most earnest effort meets with dishearteningly 
little reward; while lack of common-sense, and of course, 
above all, lack of a firm and resolute disinterestedness, in¬ 
sures the worst kind of failure. There are missionaries who 
do not do well, just as there are men in every conceivable 
walk of life who do not do well; and excellent men who 
are not missionaries, including both government officials 
and settlers, are only too apt to jump at the chance of criti¬ 
cising a missionary for every alleged sin of either omission 
or commission. Finally, zealous missionaries, fervent in the 
faith, do not always find it easy to remember that sav¬ 
ages can only be raised by slow steps, that an empty adhe¬ 
rence to forms and ceremonies amounts to nothing, that 
industrial training is an essential in any permanent upward 
movement, and that the gradual elevation of mind and 
character is a prerequisite to the achievement of any kind 
of Christianity which is worth calling such. Nevertheless, 
after all this has been said, it remains true that the good 
done by missionary effort in Africa has been incalculable. 
There are parts of the great continent, and among them 
I include many sections of East Africa, which can be made 
a white man’s country; and in these parts every effort 
should be made to favor the growth of a large and prosper¬ 
ous white population. But over most of Africa the problem 
