name and speeches are prominently before the world in connexion with political organizations and functions,” fails in his duty towards his pupils; for “their minds will inevitably be attracted towards political affairs and political agitation if they evidently constitute the main life-interest and life-work of one who stands towards them in a position of authority.”  Teachers should therefore avoid everything that tends “to impart to the minds of our boys a premature bias towards politics.”

A most admirable exhortation; but I had an opportunity of estimating the weight that it carried with some of the political leaders of Bengal when I accepted an invitation from Mr. Surendranath Banerjee to meet a few Bengalee students in an informal way and have a talk with them.  They were bright, pleasant lads, and, if they had been left to themselves, I might have had an interesting talk with them about their studies and their prospects in life, but Mr. Banerjee and several other politicians who were present insisted upon giving to the conversation a political turn of a disagreeably controversial character which seemed to me entirely out of place.

The mischievous incitements of politicians would not, however, have fallen on to such receptive soil if economic conditions, for which we are ourselves at least partly responsible, had not helped to create an atmosphere in which political disaffection is easily bred amongst both teachers and taught.  The rapid rise in the cost of living has affected no class more injuriously than the old clerkly castes from which the teaching staff and the scholars of our schools and colleges are mainly recruited.  Their material position now often compares unfavourably with that of the skilled workman and even of the daily labourer, whose higher wages have generally kept pace with the appreciation of the necessaries of life.  This is a cause of great bitterness even amongst those who at the end of their protracted, course of studies get some small billet for their pains.  The bitterness is, of course, far greater amongst those who fail altogether.  The rapid expansion of an educational system that has developed far in excess of the immediate purpose for which it was originally introduced was bound to result in a great deal of disappointment for the vast number of Indians who regarded it merely as an avenue to Government employment.  For the demand outran the supply, and the deterioration in the quality of education consequent upon this too rapid expansion helped at the same time to restrict the possible demand.  F.A.’s (First Arts) and even B.A.’s are now too often drugs in the market.  Nothing is more pathetic than the hardships to which both the young Indian and his parents will subject themselves in order that he may reach the coveted goal of University distinctions, but unfortunately, as such distinctions are often achieved merely by a process of sterile cramming which leaves the recipients quite unable to turn mere feats of memory to any practical