April ii, 1901] 



NATURE 



569 



kept this determination a most profound secret from the college 

 autiorities. 



I had three personal interviews with him during; 1896 and 

 189/, and neither then nor at any other time while I was presi- 

 dent of the college did he give the smallest hint that any dis- 

 satisfaction was felt with its condition (except on financial 

 grounds) or that anything in the shape of reorganisation was 

 contemplated or desired ; I challenge production of any official 

 docurr,ent pointing to the necessity for any reorganisation, or 

 for any change beyond those slight alterations which are from 

 time to time necessary in every living organism. A Minister 

 would deserve impeachment who really held the views which 

 Lord George Hamilton professes to have held in 1896, and took 

 no steps to give effect to those views, but continued to speak, 

 publicly and privately, in the highest praise of an institution 

 with which he was in reality so profoundly dissatisfied. 



The committee of 1895, to which Lord George Hamilton 

 refers, and whose proceedings occupy so large a space in the 

 Blue-book, did not deal at all with the question of efficiency nor 

 with the teaching staff, but with the financial question alone, a 

 question which at that time appeared somewhat pressing, but 

 which has lost its interest in view of the increasing prosperity of 

 the college during the years succeeding 1895 ; this latter fact is 

 concealed in the Blue-book by the ingeniously simple process of 

 giving the accounts only down to 1895 and suppressing those 

 of the later years. 



The India Office have striven to represent the question at 

 issue to be whether the personal interests of the professors con- 

 cerned are to outweigh the interests of the public service. The 

 real question is not this, but whether these latter interests 

 require or justify the drastic changes which have been made. 



With an experience of the Indian Public Works Department 

 and of Coopers Hill considerably greater than that of the 

 present president, I assert most positively that they do not, and 

 am prepared to prove this assertion to the satisfaction of any 

 unprejudiced authority. I believe that I could prove it to the 

 satisfaction of the Secretary of State himself, if I could get at 

 him without the intervention of a prejudiced board or of hostile 

 officials. 



It is hoped that some means will yet be found to prevent 

 irreparable injury from being inflicted on an institution which 

 has such a splendid history and has done such signal service to 

 our Indian Empire as Coopers Hill. 



Yours faithfully, 



John Pennycuick, Col. RE. (late President R.I.E.C, 



Coopers Hill). 



Camberley, April 2. 



With regard to the Report itself, which contains the 

 evidence taken by the Board of Visitors, we have 

 received the following from a Correspondent. 



After a good deal of pressure both from within and 

 from without the Houses of Parliament, the Secretary 

 of State for India agreed to hold an inquiry into the 

 condition into which the Royal Indian Engineering 

 College at Coopers Hill has fallen under the present 

 regime. This inquiry was to be held by a more or less 

 newly constituted body. Lord George Hamilton, how- 

 ever, declined to submit the question of the dismissal 

 of seven of the professors and teachers to an indepen- 

 dent body, but he offered to allow the Board of Visitors 

 to hold an inquiry into the justice of the sentences they 

 had themselves pronounced. Adopting the principle 

 familiar to readers of "Through the Lookmg-Glass," 

 the Secretary of State permits first the judgment and 

 then the trial. On the same principle, the Board of 

 Visitors, into whose competency it is perhaps the most 

 important matter of all to inquire, having acted as judges, 

 rvot to say executioners, now appear in the role of prose- 

 cuting counsel. 



The duties of the Board of Visitors of Coopers Hill 

 seem nowhere to be very clearly defined. But by all 

 analogy the stafif of the College should have the right to 

 appeal to the Board, and such an appeal should be listened 

 to with impartiality. The Blue-book issued on April i, 

 which contains the account of the inquiry, shows, how- 

 ever, the very reverse of a judicial spirit. One of the 

 disadvantages of the method of sentence first and trial 



afterwards is that instead of making " the punishment fit 

 the crime" it becomes imperative to make the crime fit 

 the punishment, and this the Board of Visitors have most 

 sedulously attempted. They evidently felt they must 

 " save their face " at no matter what cost to the institution 

 whose interests they are supposed to protect. 



Throughout the inquiry the dismissed professors and 

 teachers were subjected to a hostile examination which 

 contrasts most strangely with the friendly tone adopted 

 to the president of the College and to other members of 

 the staff, except when the evidence of the latter tended in 

 favour of their dismissed colleagues and against the 

 proposals of the president. The inquiry was rendered 

 nugatory by the rules laid down for its conduct by the 

 India Office. It was ordered that the evidence of each 

 member of the stafif should be rigidly restricted to the 

 efifect of the proposed changes on the teaching of his 

 own subject and on himself personally, thus preventing 

 material evidence being given on many points of vital 

 importance to the welfare of the College. The Board of 

 Visitors further limited the oral evidence by restricting 

 the staff to the answering of certain questions prepared 

 by the Board. The aim of Sir Charles H. T. Cros- 

 thwaite, the chairman of the Board, was apparently to 

 make each of the gentlemen dismissed admit that his re- 

 tirement was for the benefit of the College. Evidence 

 was continually ruled out because, in the opinion of the 

 chairman, it was of a personal nature ; yet Colonel Ottley 

 was allowed to indulge in personalities to an almost 

 unlimited extent. 



Throughout the inquiry the Board made little or no 

 attempt to decry the ability or the eflficiency of the gentle- 

 men concerned. That was an impossible line, but their 

 attitude throughout was one of 



" Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 

 Just hint e fault, and hesitate dislike." 



Evidence exists both in the report of the inquiry and else- 

 where that some at least of the Board were unacquainted 

 with the contents of the report contained in the first 

 Blue-book, a report purporting to have been drawn up 

 by themselves. This is possibly to be accounted for by 

 the indecent haste with which that document was con- 

 sidered and signed. More than one member of the 

 Board was unaware that he had recommended such 

 wholesale dismissals. The chairman and Sir W. S. S. 

 Bissett express ignorance of the recommendation of the 

 Board that the professor of electrical engineering should 

 teach chemistry and physics in addition to his own subject, 

 and of the fact that this extraordinary arrangement has 

 had the approval of Lord George Hamilton. The Board 

 knew so little of the staff of the College that they 

 inquired after an instructor who has been dead for some 

 years. 



A careful examination of the Blue-book and of the 

 minutes of the evidence reveals a wholesale repudiation 

 by the Board of its previous recommendations. They 

 repudiate the time-table incorporated in the first Blue- 

 book and recommended for adoption by themselves. 

 Perhaps the rejection of this document is the 

 wisest thing the Board has done. They repudiate their 

 own arrangement for the teaching of physics and 

 electrical engineering. They repudiate their own arrange- 

 ment for the teaching of mathematics, and they repudiate 

 their own arrangement for the teaching of engineering. 



One of the saddest features of the whole inquiry is 

 the persistent efifort made by both the Board and the 

 president to belittle the status of the College. Coopers 

 Hill in the past has stood high amongst the few institu- 

 tions for scientific education in this country. It has 

 done a great public service to India, and the prestige 

 attached to its name is highly valued by the Govern- 

 ment in India. Yet throughout the inquiry the Board 

 compare it to a school, or to a technical college. 

 Sir William Preece finds its nearest analogy in a 



NO. 1 64 1, VOL. 63] 



