SOME REFLECTIONS ON HOW EMPIRE CAME TO US. 



45 



Discussion. 



After some remarks by the Chairman, in which he uttered a warning 

 note against the facile way in which Evolution is adopted as an 

 established fact, whereas it has never emerged from the condition 

 of hypothesis, out of harmony with many well-established facts, the 

 discussion was thrown open. 



Colonel Sir Charles E. Yate, C.S.I., C.M.G., M.P.,in opening the 

 discussion, said that what the Lecturer had told them about the Uni- 

 versity of Hong Kong had made him wish that the feelings which had 

 moved the parents of the Chinese boys there to subscribe for a local 

 University in preference to sending their sons to a Western University, 

 had similarly moved the parents of Indian boys. Unfortunately in 

 India, parents would insist upon sending their sons to England to 

 be educated, and nothing could be worse for the boys. Not only did 

 they crowd to the Universities at Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, 

 but great numbers of them remained in London to study for the 

 Bar, and it was just as bad for those Indian boys to be turned loose 

 in the streets of London as it would be for English boys if they were 

 similarly turned loose in the streets of Calcutta. As it happened, 

 the vast majority of Indian boys sent over to Europe were drawn 

 into Socialistic and Eevolutionary Societies, and went back to 

 India imbued with the idea that if they could only upset the 

 Government there they would bring in a new heaven and a new 

 earth under their own particular form of rule, and never ceased 

 agitating with this end in view. Then, again, the Indian Universities 

 had so reduced the standard of their examinations that their degrees 

 were now practically worthless, and the main idea of their governing 

 bodies seemed to be to pass as many boys through as they possibly 

 could, and to make the tests as easy as they possibly could. 

 In India we have our Indian Universities, but unfortunately the 

 cultured life that we associate here with British Universities is sadly 

 wanting there. 



The next thing the Bishop touched upon in his lecture was the 

 consideration of how the British Empire was to be conserved, and 

 he drew attention to the fact that a situation has grown up in India 

 that is full of menace to the British Raj . Having spent the greater 



