receive salaries of less than 30 rupees (L2) a month.  One cannot, therefore, be surprised to hear that in Bengal “only men of poor attainments adopt the profession, and the few who are well qualified only take up work in schools as a stepping-stone to some more remunerative career.”  That career is frequently found in the Press, where the disgruntled ex-schoolmaster adds his quota of gall to the literature of disaffection.  But he is still more dangerous when he remains a schoolmaster and uses his position to teach disaffection to his pupils either by precept or by example.

I have already alluded to the unfortunate effect of the recommendations of the Public Service Commission of 1886-7 on the native side of the Education Service.  But if it has become more difficult to attract to it the right type of Indians, it has either become almost as difficult to attract the right type of Europeans, or the influence they are able to exercise has materially diminished.  In the first place, their numbers are quite inadequate.  Out of about 500 Europeans actually engaged in educational work in India less than half are in the service of the State.  Many of them are admittedly very capable men, and not a few possess high University credentials.  But so long as the Indian Educational Service is regarded and treated as an inferior branch of the public service, we cannot expect its general tone to be what it should be in view of the supreme importance of the functions it has to discharge.  One is often told that the conditions are at least as attractive as those offered by an educational career at home.  Even if that be so, it would not affect my contention that, considering how immeasurably more difficult is the task of training the youth of an entirely alien race according to Western standards, and how vital that task is for the future of British rule in India, the conditions should be such as to attract, not average men, but the very best men that we can produce.  As it is, the Education Department cannot be said to attract the best men, for these go into the Civil Service, and only those, as a rule, enter the Educational Service who either, having made up their minds early to seek a career in India, have failed to pass the Civil Service examinations, or, having originally intended to take up the teaching profession in England, are subsequently induced to come out to India by disappointments at home or by the often illusory hope of bettering their material prospects.  When they arrive they begin work without any knowledge of the character and customs of the people.  Some are employed in inspection and others as professors, and the latter especially are apt to lose heart when they realize the thanklessness of their task and their social isolation.  In some cases indifference is the worst result, but in others—­happily rare—­they themselves, I am assured, catch the surrounding contagion of discontent, and their influence tends rather to promote than to counteract