is world or in any other? On the political as well as other
potentialities of such an organization as Mr. Gokhale contemplates there
is no need to dwell. For the "Servants of India," moulded by one mind
and trained to obey one will, are to go forth as missionaries throughout
India, in the highways and by-ways, among the "untouchables" as well as
among the higher classes, preaching to each and all the birth of an
Indian nation.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GROWTH OF WESTERN EDUCATION.

The rising generation represent the India of the future, and though
those who come within the orbit of the Western education we have
introduced still constitute only a very small fraction of the whole
youth of India, their numbers and their influence are growing steadily
and are bound to go on growing. If we are losing our hold over them, it
is a poor consolation to be told that we still retain our hold over
their elders. I therefore regard the estrangement of the young Indian,
and especially of the young Hindu who has passed or is passing through
our schools and colleges, as the most alarming phenomenon of the present
day, and I am convinced that of all the problems with which British
statesmanship is confronted in India none is more difficult and more
urgent than the educational problem. We are too deeply pledged now to
the general principles upon which our educational policy in India is
based for even its severest critics to contemplate the possibility of
abandoning it. But for this very reason it is all the more important
that we should realize the grave defects of the existing system, or, as
some would say, want of system, in order that we may, so far as
possible, repair or mitigate them. There can be no turning back, and
salvation lies not in doing less for Indian education, but in doing
more and in doing it better.

Four very important features of the system deserve to be noted at the
outset:--(1) Following the English practice, Government exercises no
direct control over educational institutions other than those maintained
by the State, though its influence is brought in several ways indirectly
to bear upon all that are not prepared to reject the benefits which it
can extend to them; (2) Government has concentrated its efforts mainly
upon higher education, and has thus begun from the top in the
over-sanguine belief that education would ultimately filter down from
the higher to the lower strata of Indian society; (3) instruction