Page:Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, volume 1.djvu/230

 medicine and momentous to the destiny of the white race, perhaps to that of humanity itself.

So mighty, indeed, has the question appeared to me, as one who has consistently and persistently given his best thoughts and energies to the problem of " how the tribes of men might prosper," that I have been driven to initiate a special organization in Australasia for the study of phases of the subject, so infinitely beyond one's individual powers.

So wide is the question, and comparatively speaking so new, that the utmost seamanship will be required to steer this paper successfully through the Scylla of your scientific criticisms and the Charybdis of your political prejudice.

Some ten years ago a rather brilliant lecture was contributed to the Roman Catholic Convention of Australia, by my friend Dr. Ahearne, of Townsville, North Queensland, upon this very subject. But as Dr. Ahearne's conclusions were most pessimistic as regards the possibility of white peoples being able to occupy the Tropics under any but aristocratic conditions, and as I could see the dreadfully destructive consequences of his logic upon the popular ideals of a democratic Australia (by which term I do not refer to political ideas of democratic Australia, but to the use of that term in its sociological meaning, viz., a nation which shall perform its own unskilled work by its own people, in conformity with instincts of race survival which I believe to be the corner-stone of European national greatness), from that moment I gave myself to the study of the question with enthusiasm.

Dr. Ahearne's logic was that mostly used by the general scientific world ; his methods were inductive, his measure- ments of children were carefully given, but I am persuaded to believe that he allowed his deductions and conclusions to be influenced by prevalent fallacies. He believed that tropical work belonged by natural right to the coloured workman ; that the coloured skin is best adapted to sustain