be seen from the fact that, after more or less a century of British rule, and forty years after England herself woke up to the responsibilities of Governments in regard to mass education, seven children out of eight in India are growing up to-day in ignorance and darkness, and four villages out of five are as yet without a school-house! Moreover, it is ignored that what is asked at the present stage is a voice in the administration, not for the whole population, but only for those who have been qualified by education to exercise their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner. As regards the bulk of the people, it is recognised that education has got to come first, and what is urged is that this educational work should be pushed on in the most vigorous manner possible.

It is true, as I have already admitted, that an Oriental country cannot hope to advance on Western lines, except by cautious and tentative steps. But what Japan has been able to achieve in forty years, India should certainly have accomplished in a century. The attitude of the two Governments in the matter has, however, been one of the main elements of difference in the two cases. My concern, however, is more with the present and the future than with the past. And here I repeat that, unless the old faith of the educated classes. in the character and ideals of British rule is brought back, England will find on her hands before long another Ireland, only many times bigger, in India. The younger generations are growing up full of what may be called Irish bitterness, and the situation must fill all who believe in the peaceful progress of the country under British rule with anxious apprehensions. If India is to attain selfgovernment within the Empire-an idea which to an increasing proportion of my countrymen appears to be a vain dream-the advance will have to be along several lines more or less simultaneously. Of these in some respects the most important is the admission of Indians to the higher branches of the public service. As long as India continues to be bureaucratically governed, admistion to high office will be a test of the position assigned to the Indians in the system of administration. It is not a

mere question of careers for young men-though even that view is entitled to weight, and the bureaucracy certainly behaves at times as though the most important question before it was how to retain and, if possible, increase the existing number of openings for the employment of Englishmen in India-but it is a measure of our advance towards that equality which has been promised us by the Sovereign and by Parliament. Moreover, as Moreover, as the ranks of the bureaucracy come to be recruited more and more from among the Indians, its resistance to the control of taxpayers' representatives will grow less and less. At present only the field of law-there, too, only a portion of it-is freely open to us, and we find Indians there climbing right to the top of the tree. And if my countrymen are thought to be qualified to discharge the duties of Chief Justice and Advocate-General, it is preposterous that they should be kept out of the superior ranks of Excise and Opium and Salt and Customs and Post and Telegraph and Survey, and similar other services. Under present arrangements India's true centre of gravity is in London. We protest against this most unnatural, arrangement and we urge most strongly that all competitive examinations for recruitment to Indian services should be held, not in London only, but simultaneously in India and in England. And we claim to be admitted now to the executive councils of the Viceroy and the Governors of Madras and Bombay, as also to the Secretary of State's Council in this country. Next, we want district administration-which is the unit of administration in India-to be decentralised. On the one hand, it must be freed from the present excessive control of the secretariat of the central Government and its numerous special departments; and on the other, the people of the district must be provided with opportunities to influence its course more and more largely, till at last the officials become in fact, as they are in theory, the servants of the people. The first step towards this is to associate with the heads of districts, for purposes of general administration, boards of leading men elected by the people, at first, perhaps, merely advisory, but gradually entrusted with increasing powers of control. In this way an administration conducted with the real consent of the

governed may, in course of time, be substituted for the present system of administration carried on in the dark and behind the backs of the people concerned, with its attendant evils of confidential reports and police surveillance. Then local self-government must be carried further. It still remains all over the country where it was placed by Lord Ripon a quarter of a century ago, and in some places it has even been pushed back. Local bodies should now be made in the more advanced localities wholly popular assemblies and while the control of the Government over them must not be weakened, they should be freed from all petty and harassing interference on the part of officials. As regards Legislative Councils, the position is more difficult. Of course, the next instalment, whenever it comes, can I think, be clearly foreseen. The enlargement of the Councils, the widening of their functions so that Budgets should be really discussed and passed, an increase in the proportion of elected members up to the point at which the officials will still have a small standing majority

these changes may sooner or later appear safe enough even to the official mind. But the advance beyond that is really the thing that will matter, and it is not easy to see how it will come about. As long as the higher branches of the public service continue to be a practical monopoly of Englishmen, there is small chance of the Legislative Councils being entrusted with any substantial share of control over the actions of the Executive, and this consideration emphasises still further the necessity of steadily Indianising the service of the country. In the army, too, our position must be generally improved, and the commissioned ranks now thrown open to carefully selected Indians. Side by side with these reforms, mass education must be taken vigorously in hand, so that in twenty years. from now, if not earlier, there should be free and compulsory education in the country for both boys and girls.

I think that an earnest and sustained advance along these lines will go far to prevent any further alienation of the educated classes, and even their old goodwill may thus be regained. I cannot say that I have much hope that any such policy will be at once adopted. The struggle

before us is, I fear, a long one and, in all probability, it will be a most bitter one. The flowing tide, however, is with us, and such a struggle can have but one issue. It only remains for me to say that it has been a pleasure to me to respond to the kind invitation of this Association. I do not expect that my views will receive any large assent at this meeting, and this only adds to my sense of the compliment which the Association has paid me.

THE HINDU-MAHOMEDAN QUESTION.

The following is an English rendering of the speech delivered in Marathi by the Hon'ble Mr. Gokhale at a public meeting held under the auspices of the Deccan Sabha, Poona, on the 4th July 1919:

Till recently the differences between Hindus and Mahomedans which from time to time assumed an acute form and attracted public attention were generally in regard to matters involving religious sentiment, such as cow-killing and street music. No doubt complaints were occasionally heard in the addresses presented by Mahomedan Associations to men in authority, or in the columns of the Press about the Mahomedans not securing a sufficient share of the public services, or a sufficient representation on Municipal and Local Boards. But a separate organized movement of Moslem leaders, with a comprehensive programme of their own, to win special concessions for Mahomedans as a community in the administration of the country was a matter of the last two or three years only, and while there was undoubtedly a cause for sincere congratulation that their Mahomedan brethren had at last shaken off their apathy of years in political matters, their separate organisation and the demand for special concessions did not tend to diminish their growing difficulties of their public life. After glancing briefly at the past history of the two communities and the contributions made by them to the progress of the world, Mr. Gokhale proceeded to consider their respective positions at the present day in India. The Mahomedan minority, who were a little over one-fifth of the whole population was very unequally divided among the different Provinces. In the Punjab and East Bengal they actually formed a majority of the population, being a little over one-half in the Punjab and about three-fifths in East Bengal, In Bombay, on the other hand, they were only: one-fifth, in West Bengal between one-fifth and one-sixth, in the