conservative Orientals, and also fanatically
inclined Europeans, think that with the entrance of our culture the
primitive virtues of the Asiatics have been destroyed, and that the
uncivilized Oriental was more faithful, more honest, and more reliable
than the Asiatic educated on European principles. This is a gross error.
It may be true of the half-educated, but not of the Asiatic in whose
case the intellectual evolution is founded on the solid basis of a
thorough, systematic education."[252]

And, whatever may be the ills attendant upon Western education in the
East, is it not the only practicable course to pursue? The impact of
Westernism upon the Orient is too ubiquitous to be confined to books.
Granting, therefore, for the sake of argument, that colonial governments
could have prevented Western education in the formal sense, would not
the Oriental have learned in other ways? Surely it is better that he
should learn through good texts under the supervision of qualified
teachers, rather than tortuously in perverted--and more
dangerous--fashion.

The importance of Western education in the East is nowhere better
illustrated than in the effects it is producing in ameliorating the
status of women. The depressed condition of women throughout the Orient
is too well known to need elaboration. Bad enough in Mohammedan
countries, it is perhaps at its worst among the Hindus of India, with
child-marriage, the virtual enslavement of widows (burned alive till
prohibited by English law), and a seclusion more strict even than that
of the "harem" of Moslem lands. As an English writer well puts it:
"'Ladies first,' we say in the West; in the East it is 'ladies last.'
That sums up succinctly the difference in the domestic ideas of the two
civilizations."[253]

Under these circumstances it might seem as though no breath of the West
could yet have reached these jealously secluded creatures. Yet, as a
matter of fact, Western influences have already profoundly affected the
women of the upper classes, and female education, while far behind that
of the males, has attained considerable proportions. In the more
advanced parts of the Orient like Constantinople, Cairo, and the cities
of India, distinctly "modern" types of women have appeared, the
self-supporting, self-respecting--and respected--woman school-teacher
being especially in evidence.

The social consequences of this rising status of women, not only to
women themselves but also t