India is in the hands of some 1,200 men who belong to the Indian Civil Service.  Let us follow that.  Any member of a body so small must be rapidly placed in a position of command, and it is almost startling to me, when I look round on the fresh physiognomies of those who are going out, and the not less fresh physiognomies of those who have returned, to think of the contrast between your position, and that, we will say, of some of your Oxford contemporaries who are lawyers, and who have to spend ever so many years in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn or the Temple waiting for briefs that do not come.  Contrast your position with that of members who enter the Home Civil Service, an admirable phalanx; but still for a very long time a member who enters that service has to pursue the minor and slightly mechanical routine of Whitehall.  You will not misunderstand me, because nobody knows better than a Minister how tremendous is the debt that he owes to the permanent officials of his department.  Certainly I have every reason to be the last man to underrate that.  Well, any of you may be rapidly placed in a position of real command with inexorable responsibilities.  I am speaking in the presence of men who know better than I do, all the details, but it is true that one of you in a few years may be placed in command of a district and have 1,000,000 human beings committed to his charge.  He may have to deal with a famine; he may have to deal with a riot; he may take a decision on which the lives of thousands of people may depend.  Well, I think that early call to responsibility, to a display of energy, to the exercise of individual decision and judgment is what makes the Indian Civil Service a grand career.  And that is what has produced an extraordinary proportion of remarkable men in that service.

There is another elevating thought, that I should suppose is present to all of you.  To those who are already in important posts and those who are by-and-by going to take them up.  The good name of England is in your keeping.  Your conduct and the conduct of your colleagues in other branches of the Indian Service decides what the peoples of India are to think of British government and of those who represent it.  Of course you cannot expect the simple villager to care anything or to know anything about the abstraction called the raj.  What he knows is the particular officer who stands in front of him, and with whom he has dealings.  If the officer is harsh or overbearing or incompetent, the Government gets the discredit of it; the villager assumes that Government is also harsh, overbearing, and incompetent.  There is this peculiarity which strikes me about the Indian Civil servant.  I am not sure that all of you will at once welcome it, but it goes to the root of the matter.  He is always more or less on duty.  It is not merely when he is doing his office work; he is always on duty.  The great men of the service have always recognised this obligation, that official