May 3, 19 i 7] 



NATURE 



187 



must ultimately be based. If the education was 

 right everything else would foilow. He had fol- 

 lowed the trourse of education in England for 

 thirty years, and he was satisfied that all was not 

 well with education in England. To defective 

 education was due the general neglect of science 

 and the habit of "muddling through.'' The 

 radical defect, both in the schools and in the 

 ■universities, was the undue predominance of clas- 

 sical studies. In the school the classical side had 

 received almost all the encouragement, obtained 

 the best masters, and was allotted the best boys. 

 There was no room for science, modern languages, 

 or knowledge of potential industrial value when 

 so many hours were allotted to Latin and Greek. 

 The effect was constantly perpetuated by the 

 encouragement given to classical studies in the 

 form of scholarships, and the greater opportuni- 

 ties given in the public service to men trained 

 in classics. As a result those responsible for the 

 country's destinies were mainly without knowledge 

 or appreciation of science. When one con- 

 sidered that during an average youth's period of 

 education he could not get in more than 5000 

 Tiours of real solid educational work, the 

 importance of utilising these hours judiciously was 

 evident. 



Mr. Wells did not underrate what was wise and 

 beautiful in Latin and Greek and ancient 

 philosophy, and he regarded it as unfortunate that 

 such knowledge was needlessly barred from the 

 ordinary man by the insistence of pedants that it 

 could be obtained only through the vehicle of the 

 Latin and Greek languages. It was this in- 

 sistence upon the rigid study of ancient languages 

 which had raised a barrier between scientific and 

 literary studies so that men of science and scholars 

 tended to be separated into two camps, neither 

 able to sympathise with or appreciate the aims of 

 the other. 



A vote of thanks to tlie Lord Mayor and the 

 •speakers closed the proceedings. 



THE PUBLIC SERVICES OF INDIA. 



IT is just thirty years since a Commission last 

 reported on the Public Services of India. 

 They have been years of remarkable social and 

 intellectual progress, years in which the self-con- 

 sciousness and political aspirations of educated 

 Indians have developed surprisingly. It was time, 

 doubtless, that a fresh stock-taking should be 

 made. 



The present report (Cd. 8382, price 45. 2d. net) 

 •deals with all public posts carrying a salary oif 

 200I. or thereabouts and upwards. These posts 

 are roughly 10,000 in number, and since they all 

 require a knowledge of English, they have to be 

 shared between the Englishmen needed to main- 

 tain British control or required because Indians 

 have not yet sufficient technical aptitude, and the 

 if millions of Indians w^ho have had an English 

 education. Some 285 millions must, as matters 

 at present stand, go without any share of the 

 official loaves and fishes as represented by the 

 NO. 2479, VOL. 99] 



200I. limit, because they are. illiterate in English. 

 On the other hand, there is keen competition 

 among them for the minor posts in which a know- 

 ledge of English is still not always required. 

 After all, 200/. a year, in spite of a 30 f>er cent, 

 rise in prices in ten years, is a comfortable com- 

 petence in rural India. 



The problem to which the Commission has ad- 

 dressed itself is that of giving a larger proportion 

 than at present of the 10,000 better-paid posts to 

 natives of India, including domiciled descendants 

 of Europeans. It is a little surprising that, in 

 dealing with the grievance that a large share of 

 the official prizes falls to foreigners, the Commis- 

 sion has not noted the point, which any anthropo- 

 logist would grasp at a glance, that the classes 

 who, by their knowledge of English, share the 

 10,000 higher posts with Britons are, in fact, 

 Indian cosmop>olitans. They call themselves 

 " Indians," not Parsis, Bengalis, Gujaratis, etc. 

 They use English in their communications with 

 one another. English, for instance, is the lan- 

 guage of the National Congress. But in their 

 intercourse with the 285 millions thev must needs, 

 like, English officials, use the local languages. 

 These, it must be remembered, are many more in 

 number than the languages of Eurof>e, and, unlike 

 these, belong to five wholly separate families of 

 tongues. It follows that an Indian serving out 

 of his native province is every whit as much a 

 foreigner, and, with regard to local observances 

 and customs, may have as much to learn, as an 

 Englishman. In the case of the semi-barbarous 

 tribes of the hills and the N.E. frontier, educated 

 Indians have been admittedly less successful than 

 Englishmen in dealing with the people. To put 

 it in another. way, it were surprising, surely, if 

 Europe were governed by l^enevolent Martians, 

 that Englishmen should assert a claim to admini- 

 strative posts, say, in Serbia or Bulgaria on the 

 ground of their proficiency in Martian literature ! 



It must be admitted, on the other hand, that of 

 the lOjOoo-odd better-paid posts only 42 p>er cent, 

 are held by Indians. As the salarj- (and the 

 responsibility) rises the proportion of Indians 

 diminishes. At 500Z. a year it dwindles to 19 per 

 cent. ; above 800I. it is only 10 per cent. This, 

 put thus statistically, may seem a somewhat 

 serious grievance. But the Commissioners them- 

 selves assert, as the result of two years of inquiry, 

 that in. the case of the Indian Civil Service {141 1 

 posts) and the Police (926 posts) it is necessary- to 

 maintain a high proportion of Europeans in order 

 to ensure the maintenance of British policy and 

 prestige. They might have added, without exces- 

 sive indiscretion, that a large part of the work of 

 the Civil Service and the Police is precisely the 

 protection of the mute millions from the classes 

 from which the English-speaking Indians are 

 drawn. Others of the twenty-four services into 

 which the administration is divided, such as sur- 

 vey, railways (in the engineering branch), assay 

 and mint, etc., are still chiefly recruited from the 

 West because Indians with adequate technical 

 training are not available. 



It must be remembered, too, that the 10,000 



