NATIVES AND NEW IDEAS Sim,—Please allow me this final defence
of the misunderstanding of my letter of the 22nd of September. I think that the natives are excellent fellows, but raw, and need the greatest attention which my sect are already devoting to their fullest education, economically and academically. This only will assure our country's progress as a unified one whole. I have replied to Dr. Moody, and be now sees my way on many points. Nevertheless, I challenge the Church Missionary Society's state- ments. I beg to inform you also that the Africans who aspire to offices in North Africa are mostly Mahommedans.
Where my learned friends quote figures and "facts," I quote sincere friendship and knowledge of the native. There are free schools, all hospitals and aid societies run by the State for the natives ; but delay there is, I admit, and vested interests.' Financial exploitation by large firms from England, to whom all the profits go, and the natives' inter- tribal hatred, &c., are causes for the delay, topped by the fact that we who desire this progress are rather put down by the "old school" of diehards, who maintain as a standard for their positions wealth and family background—not sincerity or sacrifice of personal pride to pro- gressive ideas—" Is your father a member of the dub, my latiy? " type.
If the followers of Dr. Livingstone followed his or Mary Kingsley's magnificent sacrifices and noble minds, the natives today would have had no need of our help today. But as local parsons prefer social situations among their fellow-whites to sacrificial and non-political influence among the natives, it is not to be wondered at we so detest them. Paper returns are not signs to follow. I do not refer here to medical missions ; they are exemplary.
I defy, in conclusion, anyone, even Dr. Moody, to do better than we are now doing. I also cynically point out that the " Christian people "- really—who came out recently art among the worst offenders in dealing with the blacks. If the wages and conditions are so poor, why is it that I have never met any of these parsons and such who have paid any higher than 3os. monthly, and have demanded most exacting work for it, plus " voluntary " church work, for to serve God willingly, &c. I will and can prove this if needs be, or do they excuse this? It is human nature to blame again, I suppose.—Yours, &c.,
IAN K. MCDOUGALL.
K.G. and Q.E. Dominions Club, 3r Athenaeum Street, Plymouth.
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