wholesale
retrenchment in other departments, the financial difficulty is not the
only one to be overcome. Model schoolhouses could no doubt be built all
over India, if the money were forthcoming, instead of the wretched
accommodation which exists now, and is so inadequate that in the Bombay
Presidency alone there are said to be 100,000 boys for whom parents
want, but cannot obtain, primary education. But what of the teachers?
These cannot be improvised, however many millions Government may be
prepared to spend. There is an even greater deficiency of good teachers
than of good schoolhouses, and, in some respects, the value of primary
education still more than that of secondary education depends upon good
teachers--teachers who are capable of explaining what they teach and not
merely of reeling off by rote, and imperfectly, to their pupils lessons
which they themselves imperfectly understand. The total number of
teachers engaged in primary education exceeds 100,000, but their
salaries barely average Rs.8 (10s. 8d.) a month. So miserable a pittance
abundantly explains their inefficiency. But there it is, and a new army
of teachers--nearly half a million altogether--would have to be trained
before primary education, whether free and compulsory, as Mr. Gokhale
would have it, or optional and for payment, as others propose, could be
usefully placed within the reach of the millions of Indian children of a
school-going age.

In this as in all other matters, the Government of India cannot afford
to stand still, and will have to take Indian opinion more and more into
account. But whilst there is a very general consensus that more should
be done by the State for primary education, there is no unanimity as to
its being made free and compulsory. Various Indian members of Council
have expressed themselves against it on different grounds. Some contend
that many parents cannot afford, as bread-winners, to be deprived of the
help of their children. According to others, there is already much
complaint amongst parents that school-going boys do not make good
agriculturists and affect to consider work in the fields as beneath
their dignity. Others, again, ask, and with some reason, who is going to
care for boys of that age who may have to leave their homes and be
removed from parental control in order to attend school. There is,
doubtless, something in all these objections. Assuming that Government
can do more than it has hitherto done to fu