OUR GUARDIANSHIP IN THE EAST IT has been said that the true art of government is placed at an equal distance between the opposites of despotism and feebleness. Nowhere, perhaps, is this saying more appropriate than to our management of our Eastern dependencies. We are there either by right of conquest or through political emergency, and in no case is our presence looked upon by the races we govern or assist in governing otherwise than as a bad compromise. Willingly or unwillingly the conservative East has sent its young men to the progressive West to be instructed in our manners and ways of thought, and the result can scarcely be deemed to have been in latter years a success. Young East has gone West with all the enthusiasm and aspirations of extreme youth, to acquire the manners and customs of an alien race. This has in a large measure resulted in the formation of immature and wrongly conceived ideas. For the most part the Eastern youth has gained no value from his associations and surroundings in the West, and has never penetrated any society which was calculated to produce sane ideas and relative values. These Eastern students are thrown very much upon the society of one another, and for the habits and ideas of the people amongst whom they dwell they are indebted to the most meretricious literature of Europe and to the manners and customs prevailing in the boarding houses in which they usually live. On their arrival they have the best intentions, but circumstances are too strong for them. They have no Bench Mark from which they can guide their movements and few or no friends in England to set them on their way by kindly advice and supervision. Boys from the East are sent to Europe too young and frequently return to their own country with many of the bad habits of the West strongly inculcated into their natures. Our Public Schools and Universities in general do nothing for them except to alienate them from the habits and customs of their native land. At the end of their sojourn in the West, they only know imperfectly their own language and are even not aware that all civilisation is based on the mother tongue. They also acquire extravagant habits, which they too often have not the means to gratify. Everything in the West is foreign to them on their arrival, and having no settled purpose beyond obtaining a degree or a diploma they concentrate all their efforts in cramming a large mass of material which, for the practical purpose of their own future life, they are unable to assimilate. Their country on their return has only gained a bad foreigner, impregnated with the least desirable habits of the West, and more likely to corrupt his surroundings than to elevate them to a higher level. His curriculum in Europe has induced him to look upon everything from a competitive or qualifying examination point of view, and his residence among us, as a rule, is limited to the exact time requisite for fitting him with a diploma for the exercise of a profession or for employment under an already overstaffed Government. Armed with this, a great sense of his own importance and considerable conceit, he knocks at the doors of Government Offices to be met with the reply that there are no vacancies, or that his name will be put on the list of candidates. The professions are overcrowded and there again he must exercise patience and wait until there is room for him on the ladder of success. The diploma has not proved such an Open Sesame as he expected, and he gradually drifts into the ranks of the politically discontented and pours out his interpretation of great writers on the liberty of the individual and urges the necessity for a constitution of which he would be one of the supporting columns! He has also on his return to make his choice between abiding with his own people or throwing in his lot with the alien race on terms of toleration. This is made very clear to him soon after his arrival, as the following story will illustrate. A young Mohamadan Barrister soon after his arrival in India wrote and asked a British Officer of a Native Regiment, stationed in one of the out-of-the-way parts, if he might call on him. He received a cordial invitation in reply, which he accepted with equal cordiality. On presenting himself he was taken round by his host and introduced to all the British residents in the Station, some of whom asked him to lunch or dinner and others to tea, and by all he was made welcome. He said that during his stay in England, he had experienced so much kindness from the English people, that in India he would like to continue his pleasant relation with them.' This state of things lasted for three weeks and then he was seen no more. The officer who had introduced him met him by chance one day in the Bazaar and asked him 'why he had seen nothing of him for so long' and he replied, with great frankness and regret, 'that his own people had told him he must choose between them and the Europeans; if the latter alternative pleased him, then he must consider their doors closed to him for the future and he would be an outcast in his own land and among his own people.' The present method of educating the Eastern in England has been tried for many years and its successful results may be almost counted on the fingers of two hands. Moreover, in the successful cases the Eastern comes to have initiative and order, and thereupon becomes Western in his thoughts and ideas, hampered it may be by traditions and customs, which are, however, reserved for domestic consumption. The Eastern students should first pass through the curriculum of the schools and Universities of their own country and acquire the habits, thoughts, language and ways of living of their own people. Their residence in Europe before this takes place is mainly conducive, as regards their moral future, to the acquisition of the bad habits of the West. They only form immature and wrongly conceived ideas of existing things. They do not realise how hardly won have been the Constitution and liberties of England, where every hill has a story and every plain is an epic poem. They have no time to spare from their material studies to dive into the depths of constitutional history. Even if they had, its deeper meaning would be an enigma, which even the imagination of the East could not solve. They only see law and order as represented by the Policeman on the one hand and the House of Commons on the other. They are unable to comprehend that what they behold is the outcome of thought and struggle which have occupied the intellect and courage of the nation for centuries; that the diverse elements which constitute the British Nation have been hammered through centuries of storm and stress, civil war and threatened invasion, into one homogeneous whole; that self-sacrifice has been the keystone of the British Empire and individualism its corner-stone; that the seeker after knowledge has been content with the acquisition of what he sought, even though his contribution to progress was only infinitesimal, and his reward probably hostile criticism and reproach; that nothing sordid or mean has ever stood in the way of the makers of the path of progress during the years that are gone and that the present has her aspirations for realisation in the future. Between the East and West there is still a great gulf fixed which the education of a few students in Europe will never effectually span. There still exists that great inert mass of tradition and custom, extending over almost countless centuries, to be removed, and this cannot be done by the education in England of a comparatively few students, whose influence over their fellowcountrymen is in most cases reduced, rather than advanced, by their education. Even a Greek educated in England, and who called England home, was not able to introduce into the family 359 MIM, MÁ NA on a dipinta large make own future I Their ex impregnated likely to con level, Hi everything view, and exact tin cise of staffed import Glover Vaca The pat: i the infusion of higher ideals. That epidemic of erness would disappear with the growth of men who le moral as well as the material advance of a country. obriety, and wisdom would be given to the judgment, the intellectual life of the people, and equality of opporuld come in its appointed time. The habit of thinking low and both sides of the question would be looked at ɔnouncing an opinion. The imagination which is already in the East would gather to itself breadth of sympathy, out the union of these two things no man can be really post-graduate student would arrive in England in quite rent frame of mind from that of the young students who lood the Inns of Court and other places of learning. His would be more stable. He would, if politics interested him, them from a healthier standpoint. He would come armed introductions to people who would help him and put him Je way of acquiring what he had travelled so far to obtain. genuine seeker after knowledge is always a welcome and oured guest in the seats of learning. His position would be re assured and his time more profitably spent than that of a unger and less experienced man. There can be no doubt that great harm has been and is being one both to England and the East, by sending shoals of students > England at their most impressionable age. They become the rey of secret political societies at an age when they are unable to form a sound opinion on any given subject, and the very young almost always regard themselves as infallible. On their return home they find they have lost touch and that things are not as they were. The result is unhappiness, discontent and a desire to turn their old conservative institutions upside down the moment they have landed. It is this young turbulent minority which causes much of the discontent and unrest in the East, and the supply in the interest of both West and East should be stopped before further mischief is done. Education in the East should also lean very much to the technical side, for it is obvious that everyone cannot become a member of a learned profession or a clerk. The trades should be encouraged and the old system of apprenticeship should be revived. Where one industry has become effete through the change that is ever slowly working in this world of time, it should be supplanted by one ready to take its place. Trade should never become restricted or lessen in volume, as this entails misery to the very poor, and a new outlet should always be provided to give work to those who se trade has become obsolete or drifted into other channels. Agriculture should be brought to its highest point VOL. LXXXVI-No. 511 2 H |