SCHOOL IN THE WILD

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 73, 30 March 1929, Page 15

SCHOOL IN THE WILD

. 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 iv the right way a new era will dawn on this African Native. The school takes the elephants very young aud while they are still growing. It takes them by cunning and brings them in to lessons before they are' 6 foot. The lessons are to teach them to carry and to work, oven as their Asiatic relatives do, when, as at Mandalay, Elephants are piling teak Iv the sludgy, squdgy creek. But, whereas the Indian 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 elephant 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 no complaints. One elephant teaches another, so that in the future there should be an African Elephants' 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 bo 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.