it difficult to provide elementary schools
everywhere,[72] education is, among the whites, well cared for, and in
some regions, such as the Orange Free State, the Boer element is just as
eager for it as is the English. Neither are efficient secondary schools
wanting. That which is wanting, that which is urgently needed to crown
the educational edifice, is a properly equipped teaching university.
There are several colleges which provide lectures,[73] and the Cape
University holds examinations and confers degrees; but to erect over
these colleges a true university with an adequate teaching staff seems
to be as difficult an enterprise at the Cape as it has proved to be in
London, where thirteen years had to be spent in efforts, not successful
till 1898, to establish a teaching university. It is strange to find
that in a new country, where the different religious bodies live on good
terms with one another, one of the chief obstacles in the way is the
reluctance of two of the existing colleges, which have a denominational
character, to have an institution superior to them set up by the State.
The other obstacles are the rivalry of the eastern province with the
western, in which, at Cape Town, the natural seat of a university would
be found, and the apathy or aversion of the Dutch section of the people.
Some of them do not care to spend public money for a purpose whose value
they cannot be made to understand. Others, knowing that a university
would necessarily be mainly in English hands and give instruction of an
English type, fear to establish what would become another Anglifying
influence. Thus several small colleges go on, each with inadequate
resources, and the Cape youth who desires to obtain a first-rate
education is obliged to go to Europe for it. He cannot even get a full
course of legal instruction, for there is no complete law school. It is
no doubt well that a certain number of young men should go to Europe and
there acquire a first-hand knowledge of the ideas and habits of the Old
World; but many who cannot afford the luxury of a European journey and
residence remain without the kind of instruction to which their natural
gifts entitle them, and the intellectual progress of the country
suffers. Were Cape Colony somewhere in the United States, a millionaire
would forthwith step in, build a new university, and endow it with a few
millions of dollars. But South Africa is only just beginning to produce
great fortunes; so