Page:Frontiers.djvu/59

 Rh have an instinctive gift of sympathy with the native tribes, they will hardly succeed—patience and tact, initiative and self-restraint, these are the complex qualifications of the modern school of pioneers. To these attainments should be added—for the ideal Frontier officer—a taste for languages, some scientific training, and a powerful physique. The work, which he may be called upon to perform, may be that of the explorer or the administrator or the military commander, or all of them at the same time. The soldier, perhaps more often than the civilian, furnishes this type; and it is on the Frontier that many of the greatest military reputations have been made. The Frontier officer takes his life in his hands; for there may await him either the knife of the Pathan fanatic, or the more deadly fevers of the African swamp. But the risk is the last thing of which he takes account. He feels that the honour of his country is in his hands. I am one of those who hold that in this larger atmosphere, on the outskirts of Empire, where the machine is relatively impotent and the individual is strong, is to be found an ennobling and invigorating stimulus for our youth, saving them alike from the corroding ease and the morbid excitements of Western civilization. To our ancient Universities, revivified and reinspired, I look to play their part in this national service. Still from the cloistered alleys and the hallowed groves of Oxford, true to her old traditions, but widened in her activities and scope, let there come forth the invincible spirit and the unexhausted moral fibre of our race. Let the advance guard of Empire march forth, strong in the faith of their ancestors, imbued with a sober virtue, and above all, on fire with a definite purpose. The Empire calls, as loudly