PART 1. 
Tt is not only that the population of the world is increasing, but that 
the standard of life is rising generally everywhere and that all the 
peoples of the world are requiring more and more of the fruits of the 
earth if they are to expand or even maintain their standard of life and 
their industries. The economic pressure that results from that 
demand 1s an immeasurable force and that is the force with which we 
have to deal here in East Africa at the present time. 
That mighty force creates one of the greatest political problems in 
history. 1 am not going to speak about that now except to say this, 
that the political problem would be insoluble without the help of the 
scientific study which you represent. There is an extraordinary range 
of products obtainable from these regions. There is a wide range of 
animal products, grains, pulses, oil seeds, fibres for textile industries, 
rubber, fruit, all connected with the agricultural industry of the 
countries represented at this Conference. Which of these things are 
we to concentrate on most and how are we to proceed with the 
production of the best crops? How are we to deal moreover with some 
>f the features of the agricultural problem here, where there is not 
only great wealth of soil but a great wealth of pests? In all these 
things we want your help in research and investigation. 
The study of applied agriculture has been for years carried on in 
rather a sporadic and unco-ordinated and piecemeal fashion; and it is 
only in the present century that it has really come to be organised. 
Looking back on it, it reminds me a little of the history of the 
humanities, scholarship and learning after the fall of the Roman 
Empire. During the dark ages when human learning was at a very 
low ebb, scholars, single scholars were travelling through the darkness 
feeling themselves very much alone and lifting weak and tremulous 
lamps to try and illumine the shadows about them. But as you know, 
after the dark ages came one of those extraordinary changes in history. 
The sky turned grey and light began to spread. The lonely workers 
discovered that they were not alone; scholar held out hand to scholar; 
the pursuit of knowledge at last was organised. ~~ Great universities 
were founded and from that time the pursuit of learning went on like 
a great army on the march with all its accoutrements glinting in the 
sun. That is something like the history of the study of agriculture in 
the last two generations. It has made astonishing progress in the 
present century. Research is being co-ordinated and organized, and 
it owes its present progress in the Empire to one man more than any 
other, Lord Milner. To his name I pay tribute to-day. No man 
would have welcomed so gladly the Conference assembled here as Lord 
Milner, who was one of the great pioneers of agricultural study and 
research in the Empire. 
I am glad to know that the Imperial College of Tropical 
Agriculture in Trinidad is making progress with the scholarship scheme 
in which we participate. I am also glad to know that in the heart of 
the Empire, in London, there is now set up a system parallel to the 
Committee of Imperial Defence, the great Committee of Civil 
Research, to co-ordinate the investigation and study of all the great 
problems of normal life. Lord Balfour, who is the leading spirit of that 
Committee at the present time, is not only a statesman of unrivalled 
experience but is a man of science and philosophy, and I believe under 
his broad and fertile mind that Committee is going to perform the 
oreatest services to the Colonial Empire. 1 can say on behalf of 
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