others are far from being happy.  A few gain admission to colleges, the rest are “unattached.”  Lodging-house existence at Oxford or Cambridge is preferable to that in London; but it does not assist to a knowledge of the English.  Foreigners at the Universities take the trouble to try and know the Indian, and extend to him that friendship which the English undergraduate, through youthful lack of thought, withholds.  The Imperial instinct is lacking in the youth of to-day; else would they realize that it is an important duty to try and know fellow-subjects from a distant part of the Empire.  There is nothing that Orientals will not do to make the stranger to their country feel at home.  They cannot understand the reserved Occidental who leaves the stranger to his Western country all alone.  Some of the Indian students think that the only way to bid for the English undergraduate’s acquaintance is by a lavish expenditure on wine parties; and so he spends largely, and acquires an acquaintance, but not with the typical Englishman.  If Indian students at the old Universities are only to know each other or foreigners, how are they to be bound by a loyal attachment to England?  At Edinburgh the gulf is wide indeed.  A number of Colonial students help to make it wider.  The two sides seldom or never meet.  They just tolerate each other’s presence.  So the Indian student is tempted to seek for company in circles which do not help his education or tend to elevate him.  Should such a state of things continue?

Engineering and medical students are in better case than others.  Their work is so hard and exacting, if they do it aright, they have no time to feel solitude.  The one complaint of engineering students is that they find it enormously difficult to gain opportunities for learning the practical side of their work.  Firms are most reluctant to admit them as apprentices.  France and Germany welcome them, and Continental firms extend to them the aid the English firms deny.  Is it always to be so?  Other nations gaining that esteem and gratitude which England should so jealously acquire and guard.  Americans, too, are winning the good will of the Indian student both in India and abroad.  They have well-equipped schools and colleges all over India.  They spare no efforts to make the Indian student feel they are there solely for him.  They are with him in and out of school and college hours.  They inspire him with their enthusiasm.  Wherever they meet him they give him a grip of the hand which leaves him in no doubt as to their frank friendliness.  Yet it is not to America nor to any other nation that India belongs, but to England.  But there is no security in mere possession.  The only safety lies in the constant effort to hold—­to hold pleasantly, gaining the heart and head.