facade and the marble columns of the aula maxima which aroused his patriotic envy are but a small part of the educational structure which he saw and thought he understood.  If he would read the history of the systems and trace the successive stages by which the need for these great institutions was established, he would have a little more sympathy with the difficulties of the Department, a little more patience with its Fabian policy.

I must not, however, utter a word which suggests that the Department has any ground of complaint against the country for the spirit in which it has been met; especially as there was one factor to be taken into account which made it difficult for public opinion to approve of our policy.  As I have already explained, a large capital sum of a little over L200,000 was handed over to the Department at its creation.  During the first year, what with the organisation of the staff, the thinking out of a policy on every side of the Department’s work, the constitution of the statutory committees to administer its local schemes in town and country, the agreement, after long discussion, between the central body and these committees upon the local schemes, and all the other preparatory steps which had to be taken before money could wisely be applied, it is obvious that the Department could not have spent its income.  In the second year, and even the third year, savings were effected, and the original capital sum has been largely increased.  What more natural than that in a poor country a spending Department which was backward in spending should appear to be lacking in enterprise, if not in administrative capacity?  But whether the policy was right or wrong it has unquestionably been approved by the best thought in the country, a fact which throws a very interesting light upon the constitutional aspects of the Department.  At each successive stage the policy was discussed at the Council of Agriculture and its practical operation was dependent upon the consent of the Boards which have the power of the purse.  A Vice-President who had not these bodies at his back would be powerless, in fact would have to resign.  Thoughtless criticism has now and again condemned not only the parsimonious action of the Department, but the invertebrate conduct of the Council of Agriculture and the Boards in tolerating it.  The time will soon come when the service rendered to their country by the members of the first Council and Boards, who gave their representative backing to a slow but sure educational policy, and scorned to seek popularity in showy projects and local doles, will be gratefully remembered to them.

Already we have had some gratifying evidences that the country is with us in the paramount importance we attach to education as the real need of the hour.  Most readers will be surprised to hear that in the short time the Department has been at work it has aided in the equipment of nearly two hundred science laboratories and of about fifty manual instruction workshops, while the many-sided programme involved in the movement as a whole is in operation in some four hundred schools attended by thirty-six thousand pupils.