ELEPHANT TEACHERS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 102, 4 May 1929, Page 18

ELEPHANT TEACHERS

In the Belgian Congo there is a training school for African elephants, and if only the elephant teachers can succeed , in bringing up the young elephants in [ the right way a new era will dawn on this African native. The school takes the elephants very young and while they are still growing, it takes them by cunning, and brings them into lessons before they are 6ft The lessons are to teach them to carry and to work, even as their Asiatic relatives do, when, as at Mandalay, Elephants are piling teak In the sludgy squdgy creek. But, whereas the ludian elephant is on the whole a willing worker, the African elephants have forgotten all about it since the days when Hannibal brought them to Europe. They have had to learn all over again, but some of them have proved such docile pupils that the Belgian ele-' phaut school let five of its scholars out on hire last year. Their hirers said they were well satisfied with the work of the elephants on their farms, and from these new farm labourers were Bo complaints. One elephant teaches another, so that m the future there should be an African Elephant Trade Union, with hours and food and rates of pay all fixed in a friendly manner. When that day comes the elephant problem of Africa will be solved. Elephants, such as those which lately invaded the Transvaal from Northern Rhodesia, and proved a great nuisance to the farmers, will all be drafted into labour battalions. No hunter will'ever be allowed to shoot an elephant for its tusks, because its labour will be more valuable than ivory.