MORE WHITE SETTLERS.

Shannon News, 4 August 1925, Page 3

MORE WHITE SETTLERS.

THE PRINCE’S TOUR. ____ Travelling through the eastern province of Cape Colony, with five halts at typical little wayside country towns, we have had to-day constantly before our eyes South Africa’s greatest need (wrote Mr. G. Ward Price, correspondent with the Prince of Wales’ party, on May 19). That need is of while population to develop these wide-stretching open uplands. Thanks to their fertility and the supply of cheap native labour they suppoi't an already, prosperous though scattered community of dairy farmers. But one glance at the crowds waitingtor the Prince at such small stations as Bedford,' Adelaide, Fore Beaufort, ; Alice, was enough to show how decidedly the black inhabitants outnum- ; ber the white.

Strongly established custom, which it is now proposed to reinforce by legislation, at present keeps this native population front using its weight of numbers to challenge European neighbours in economic competition, but the spread of education .and the growth of the native press, and, above all, the development of a new, strong corporate feeling among the natives of the country, must inevitably result in a trial of strength between the two races which live side *by side in South Africa. When that comes it will shake the country to its foundations, and unless the white inhabitants And some means of rapidly increasing their numerical strength it is by no means certain that they will be able to retain their present position of undisputed authority over the native races, which outnumber them nearly fourfold. Here, as everywhere throughout the Empire, the spread of education among the, natives is raising up for the next generation problems ol’ racial rivalry, such as we have never yet had to face. Theoretically any man, whatever his colour, is made a better citizen by education; practically, it-

results far too frequently in filling the native mind with precocious ideas of racial equality and so forth which are totally unfounded in fact and lead to sedition and discontent such as that, which the native body called “The xSthiopian Church” is covertly carrying on under tho cloak of religion. To-day at Alice the Lovedale' Institution was paraded for the Prince’s inspection. This seminary, which now educates natives of both sexes up to Ihe standard of a university degree, has 700 students. Its graduates are so far under a dozen, and have found suitable employment either as doctors in native areas or as native missionaries and teachers. These are doing good work, but the possibility of the creation of a “failed 8.A.” class in South Africa is not a danger to be overlooked, with the example of the Babu agitation in India already in existence.” .. Left to develop uLiir his own lines, the South African native is of a simple, contented, and trusting character. His confidence in the white man’s good nature is well illustrated by a letter, entirely free from punctuation, which reached the Royal train from a Kaffir inhabitant of the Bedford district, whose wardrobe was insufficient for him to attend the Prince’s reception. He writes:— My children ask me what trouse you going wear dad. I say this is only the trouse I have khaki trouse. ‘ They say know you will look ashamed. Of course they quite right. Sir I am short of trouse for that day. Please -will you give me order for gray per of trouse cost 17s lid.