Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/430

 the native. I don't dispute the statement; I only call attention to two different ideas of the importance of education. In the Philippine Islands, in Guam, in Porto Rico, in Honolulu, in Cuba, we are insisting upon education as the solution of the native problem; over here, the powers insist that education only makes the native problem worse. At home, we are called upon to contribute money with which to send missionaries to the heathen. Over here, where the heathen lives, the whites almost universally say that the missionary causes useless trouble. I am not trying to settle the question, or argue it: I am merely calling attention to a queer phase of it A gentleman told me today that in Portuguese East Africa, where he lives, there is a Catholic mission in charge of French priests. In the chapel, there are huge oil paintings showing pictures of hell. The devil is represented as a negro. In one picture, a native is dying, and hundreds of fiends surround his bed, waiting until life is extinct, that they may torture him. There is education of this sort in Africa, but no school-house for the natives Religious services were held in the dining-room at five o'clock this afternoon, conducted by a German. The full band was used instead of an organ; the preacher would line a hymn, and then those present would sing it, accompanied by the band The ship's library contains books printed in German, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch, which will give you an idea of the different nationalities patronizing this line.