s, out of a total
population of 294 millions, less than sixteen millions could read and
write in any language--not fifteen millions out of the whole male
population and not one million out of the whole female population--and
this modest amount of literacy is mainly confined to a few privileged
castes.

With the growth of a school of Indian politicians bent upon undermining
British rule, the almost inconceivable ignorance in which the masses are
still plunged has become a real danger to the State, for it has proved
an all too receptive soil for the calumnies and lies of the political
agitator, who, too well educated himself to believe what he retails to
others, knows exactly the form of calumny and lie most likely to appeal
to the credulity of his uninformed fellow-countrymen. I refer
especially to such very widespread and widely believed stories as that
Government disseminates plague by poisoning the wells and that it
introduces into the plague inoculation serum drugs which destroy
virility in order to keep down the birth-rate. No one has put this point
more strongly than Lord Curzon:--

What is the greatest danger in India? What is the source
of suspicion, superstition, outbreaks, crime---yes, and also
of much of the agrarian discontent and suffering amongst
the masses? It is ignorance. And what is the only antidote
to ignorance? Knowledge.

Curiously enough, it was one of Lord Curzon's bitterest opponents who
corroborated him on this point by relating in the course of a recent
debate how, when the Chinsurah Bridge was built some years ago over the
Hughli, "the people believed that hundreds and thousands of men were
being sacrificed and their heads cut off and carried to the river to be
put under the piers to give the bridge stability, so that the goddess
might appreciate the gift and let the piers remain." And he added:--"I
know that ignorant people were afraid to go out at nights, lest they
might be seized and their heads cut off and thrown under the piers of
the Hughli Bridge."

It was, however, on more general consideration, as is his wont, that Mr.
Gokhale moved his resolution in the first Session of the Imperial
Council at Calcutta last winter for making elementary education free and
compulsory, and for the early appointment of a committee to frame
definite proposals.

Three movements [he claimed] have combined to give
to mass education the place which it occupies at present
amongs