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co-operation, more particularly co-operative credit, in which 
India has made a success quite unique in the history of co- 
operation, I think they will do well to send there, and ask 
for tuition. 
I want to point out particularly in connection with the 
paper by Senhor Mendonca and his colleagues, that the 
pioneers of co-operation in Portugal have distinctly preferred 
co-operative credit, and that all other methods have failed. You 
see the results of the opposite policy in France and in Italy, 
where Government help given without the aid of co-operative 
societies has wholly broken down. In Egypt they began with 
the National Bank lending money. That system has been 
unsuccessful, because the people would not repay what they 
thought was a gift, and they contracted the bad habit of 
running into debt. A few years ago there was about £40,000 
overdue. They could not proceed against them, and they 
had to pass the five feddan law, which makes properties under 
five feddans inalienable. With that the general system of 
agricultural credit ended. Now they are turning their minds 
to co-operative credit. 
Sir James Wilson has very rightly emphasized that in tropical 
countries you cannot apply the same standard that you do in 
European countries, where people have some idea of business 
and some degree of self-confidence and self-reliance. You 
have to begin there with what may be called an infant school 
training for co-operation. In some countries you will be worse 
off even than in India, because in India after all there is money. 
You will have to find some source of supply which will give 
you the money, and which will fit the people gradually for 
practising co-operation. Therefore in countries of that de- 
scription I am not at all opposed, as I have sometimes been 
reproached for being, to State assistance if applied on the right 
lines. If, as I believe is necessary, State aid is to be given 
for training up to co-operation, I think three conditions must 
be observed. In the first place you must not supply more from 
outside than is strictly necessary. That is the principle they 
have adopted in India, and Lord Curzon has done me the 
honour of referring to me as the authority in deference to 
which he has adopted it. He said: ‘‘ We are not niggardly; 
we do not grudge the money, but we do not want to spoil 
co-operation.”’ You must supply only what is necessary, and 
by that means train the people gradually to calculate, and to 
deal in a business-like way with their money. The second point 
is that you should give help on business lines. In India the 
Government lent money at 4 per cent., which was under 
the usual rate, and the registrar at once protested that that 
