rpetrated by misguided youths of the student class is hardly as
ominous as the homage paid to the murderers' memories by whole schools
and colleges. Most ominous of all is the tolerance, and sometimes the
encouragement, extended to such demonstrations by schoolmasters and
professors. These are symptoms that point to a grave moral disease
amongst the teachers as well as the taught, which we can only ignore at
our peril and at the sacrifice of our duty towards the people of India.
In his last two Convocation speeches, Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee has himself
felt constrained to lay special stress on the question of teachers and
politics. Alluding in 1909 to "the lamentable events of the last 12
months," he maintained, "without hesitation," that "the most strenuous
efforts must be unfalteringly made by all persons truly interested in
the future of the rising generation to protect our youths from the hands
of irresponsible people who recklessly seek to seduce our students from
the path of academic life and to plant in their immature minds the
poisonous seeds of hatred against constituted Government." This year he
was even more outspoken, and laid it down that even the teacher "who
scrupulously abstains from political matters within his class-room, but
at the same time devotes much or all of his leisure hours to political
activities and agitation, and whose 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 controve