Transplantation of Children.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume II, Issue 145, 15 May 1900, Page 3

Transplantation of Children.

Some time ago we referred to a proposal that large ,n ambers of the .British soldiers who are serving in South Africa should be offered inducements to remain, th^re, so that '"hey might sow deep in the laud tne seed of the British nation. Another proposal, with tilts same object in \ijw, hus been made by the Marquis of Lo.-ne, now Daka of Argyll, who suggests that when the war is over, " State children" should be transplanted from Great Britain to the Transvaal and the Free Slatt?, liter the manner adopted in Cauada. During the ten years that ended in December, 1899, nearly 2500 children »were sent from England to the two provinces of Ottawa and Manitoba, and the colonial authorities recognisethatithe majority of them are making excellent colonists. It is stated, on the very highest anthoiity, that only a very small percentage of the children prove failures, and that the rest become good and industrious settlers. Hitheito, the cost of sending young emigrants >to any other colony has been so mueSli greater than <that of sending .them i;o Canada,, that Scfcath -Africa has been neglected, but .it is now asked why the system should not be extended in this direction. la the Free State and the Transvaal, and also, indeed, in many a fertile nook of .Cape Colony and Natal, there is plenty of room for more white blood. Small settlements could be. organised in carefully chosen places, where schoolmasters and others who undertake the training of children,, could be sent from Britain to educate, the pioneers of, perhaps,, another great colonial Empire. Care could be taken, as is done in Canada, to prevent the importation of any physical or criminal taint, and the children oi" the State could be taught farming, ranching, mining, or any other profitable vocation. They could, in short, be brought up to usefully fill places in that South African Union of Provinces, which it is thought by many .people is the only true solution of the South African problem. The Duke of Argyll thinks that ,they would be in no danger of deteriorating, either physically, mentally or morally, under their new conditions ; that the climate of the Cape and of the plate ux from Pretoria >to - Capetown, would ensure the development of a vigorous youag people, and that their surroundings would keep warm within them th 9 spirit of Imp srialisin that is now animating every branch of the nation.