patient and often obscure
spadework of the Indian Civil Service--by its integrity, its courage,
its knowledge, its efficiency, and its unfailing sense of justice.

Complaints of the aloofness of the British civilian very seldom proceed
either from Indians of the upper classes or from the humbler folk. They
generally proceed from the new, more or less Western-educated middle
class whose attitude towards British officials is seldom calculated to
promote cordial relations; and they are also sometimes inspired by
another class of Indian who, one may hope, will before long have
vanished, but whom of all others the civilian is bound to keep at arm's
length. There are men who would get a hold upon him, if he is a young
man, by luring him into intrigues with native women, or by inveigling
him into the meshes of the native moneylender, or who, by less
reprehensible means, strive to establish themselves on a footing of
intimacy with him merely in order to sell to other Indians the influence
which they acquire or pretend to have acquired over him. Cases of this
kind are no doubt rare, and growing more and more rare, as social
conditions are passing away which in earlier days favoured them. Less
objectionable, but nevertheless to be kept also at arm's length, is the
far more numerous class of natives known in India as _umedwars_, who are
always anxious to seize on to the coat tails of the Anglo-Indian
official in order to heighten their own social _status_, and, if
possible, to wheedle out of Government some of those minor titles or
honorific distinctions to which Indian society attaches so much
importance.

In other branches of the public service selection has not always
operated as successfully as the competitive system for the Civil
Service. Men are too often sent out as lawyers or as doctors, or even,
as I have already pointed out, to join the Education Department, with
inadequate qualifications, and they are allowed to enter upon their
work without any knowledge of the language and customs of the people.
Such cases are generally the result of carelessness or ignorance at
home, but some of them, I fear, can only be described as "jobs"--and
there is no room in India for jobs. The untravelled Indian is also
brought into contact to-day with an entirely different class of
Englishman. The globe-trotter, who is often an American, though the
native cannot be expected to distinguish between him and the Englishman,
constantly sins fro