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the present war which has to teach this great lesson to every country recalls to our mind what Dr. Cunningham has written in his book "The Western Civilisation." "In order to secure political independence," he says, every nation should fully utilise its resources." How is this to be done then? A protectionist will reply that a country that just begins to utilise her resources can do it only by protection and not by absolute free trade. Free trade, it is recognised even by the free traders, cannot be good for infant industries. "A nation," says Dr. Cunningham, "must be far advanced in her economic condition before it can adopt a cosmopolitan policy." Fortunately this idea of protection has been endorsed by the three Commissions appointed in Madras, United Provinces, and Calcutta, which have impartially recorded their opinion that protection is necessary for some of our industries.

These are some of the means which, I hope, will contribute to the wealth of India. I showed you the annual wealth of India taking the statistics of the prosperous year 1913-14. A critic will certainly find them insufficient for the proper understanding of our material welfare. I agree with him but I think it will fairly show you the chief factors of our annual produce. This is very poor when compared with that of other nations. For that, I proposed some means of increasing our wealth. In describing the importance of each I had a special stress on skill and industrial education, because I believe many of our industries do not prosper on account of the want of proper men. It may be argued that material welfare reveals dismal pictures of "struggle for existence" and "armed peace," which may burst out in a terrific war like the present. But the optimist views this with reserve. He says if material progress creates poverty, anxieties, diseases, and insanitary houses, are there not counteracting forces working to modify and in some cases to overpower these evils? Has not

material prosperity secured the well-being of the poor by providing means which could hardly have been divined in the past? Have not State insurances, labour regulations, trade unions, and sanitary regulations modified the lot of the poor? Moreover, has it not produced a superior mode of living? In the present age, man lives a strenuous, disciplined and regular life instead of a life of inactivity, dullness and indolence. As regards the second objection, he is no less optimistic. If the material well-being creates a feeling of jealousy among nations and the repudiation of their solemn promises, are there not, he asks, solemn and friendly obligations, such as tariff treaties, international communications, international treaties of defence, etc., which speak of the honesty and friendliness of nations? These objections should not distract you from your noble cause. You must strive for material progress which is a factor of your national growth and to which you are bound to contribute something. Whether this bold preaching on my part is due to my blindness to see everything good in the dazzling Western civilization, or to the false idea that it is an urgent necessity of the people who want to aspire to greatness, or of a Government which wants to be independent, it is for you to judge. But I am bold enough to say this that every nation which cares to be great and independent shall have to adapt itself to the current of Western civilization. The history of Japan confirms this fact. Japan saw after the event of 1864, that in order to exist as an independent nation and to fully deserve the name of Japan,' Empire of the Rising Sun as her Western neighbours called her, it was no use sneering at the red-bearded barbarians' civilization and eulogising their own. They saw that their salvation lay in adopting Western civilization, and it is surprising to know that there was no grumbling among the ignorant even against that ideal. They saw

that their interest was in abolishing the distinction between the Shogun, the Samurai and the lower classes of No, Ko, Cho, and Eta and in creating the distinctions between the active and the inactive, the industrial and the indolent, and the learned and the ignorant. They, therefore, placed the two sexes on an equal footing, sent out and welcomed-not asked to undergo Prayachits the youths who had gone to Western countries to learn at the Universities, to serve in the Army and the Navy, and to work at the countinghouses, offices, and factories. The result of all

these is, that she has become one of the greatest nations of the earth within a very short time. Her youths who had gone out in the West have won great battles of Mukden and Fenshan, formed a constitutional government and enabled her to produce all things necessary from the pin to the dreadnought. India should take the example of her ally, young in size but great in power, and her youths should follow in her footsteps if they want salvation, or in the words of H. H. the the Gaekwar,' if they yet want to save the fortunes of their country.'

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F the three broad divisions under which the problems of education may be discussed and dealt with, namely, Primary, Secondary, and University, a melancholy satisfaction is felt by the public in regard to the first, in that the responsibilities thereof rest wholly with the Government of the land. The other two may be considered together, inasmuch as Secondary education is associated in the popular mind with University Education, and is praised or blamed according as it entitles or does not entitle those who pursue it to a University career. anathemas that were once heaped upon the Matriculation Examination and Examiners have now been duly transferred to the Intermediate Examination, and the progressive diminution in the percentage of passes during the past quinquennium has added to the students' cry of grief, a cry of protest from the parent and the public man. Popular indignation has indeed grown more furious this year by virtue of the fact that the protests of last year, while not helping to improve the students' lot, have not even conduced to the maintenance of status quo ante. Desperate

attempts have therefore been made alike by experts and tyros to apportion the blame among the examinations, the examiners, the students, the principals, the European members of the Senate and the Syndicate. Some eminentinen have suggested an enquiry and investigation into the causes of failure. Such an enquiry may, by clearing up matters, really help to vindicate some of those who are undeservedly blamed and fix responsibility upon those who are guilty. If, however, with or without such an enquiry the Syndicate should decide to increase the percentage of passes by another six or seven, the step would undoubtedly assuage public feeling while the educational problem would continue to be as grave as ever.

Wherein, then, does the gravity consist? Not alone in the paucity of passes, nor altogether in the poverty of careers for those that pass. The problem is graver from the standpoint of those that fail than those that pass. All public anxiety seems to centre round the percentage of passes and takes little note of the vast numbers that have left their homes, incurred heavy debts, oftentimes sold their property and invested it in

this very speculative trade of education. A recent writer on the "Universities of the World "has classified them under four heads: those that aim at the discovery and propagation of truth such as the German Universities; those that seek to draw out the latent faculties of the alumni such as the Scotch Universities; those which make the gentleman such as Oxford and Cambridge; and lastly those which train their products to a vocation in life such as the Indian Universities. Whatever redeeming features may have been added in recent times, the Madras University along with' the sister institutions of the country must continue to be judged by the standard set forth in this classification and what has been regarded as the function of the University may broadly be regarded as the function of the system of education as well. An educationist of some eminence has, in contradistinction to this position, stated that while the successfuls are good bread-winners, the failures may be regarded as having received a good education which should be valued for its own innate worth. While it is a poor compliment to a University to say that its function is to train bread-winners, it is a poor consolation to its "unsuccessfuls" to urge that they have pursued the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. The gravity of the problem then will be understood when we study the careers of those that pass and the fates of those that fail, and the relative numbers representing the two classes. It would be both interesting and useful to follow up a batch of 10,000 School Final students in their quest of knowledge. It would be a fair estimate to say that about 3,000 S. S. L. C. holders might gain entrance into the thirty-six Colleges under the University. Of these, detentions in the Junior Intermediate and at the Preliminary, together with those that just join the Intermediate so as to secure a Matriculation Certificate and drop off would account for a reduction of 500, leaving about 2,500 as the first chance students

appearing for the Intermediate Examination. The present percentage of passes computed from numbers actually sent up, would give 600 passes and presuming that all these join the B. A. classes, about 200 graduates may be expected as a fair outturn. Half of these would go as teachers, clerks, merchants, etc., while the other half would drift into the Law factory wherein three filtrations take place, each eliminating a third and all yielding at the end about. 10 B.L's. This calculation is not only fair but liberal, and to ten B.L's we may expect one Medico and one Engineer at the outside. To pursue the careers of these few out of the original batch of ten thousand may not be wholly relevant to our present purpose but the obverse of it, namely, the fate of the 7,000 School Final failures, 2,400 Intermediate failures, 400 " plucked B. A's,' 90" plucked B.L's," is really heart-rending. If all these passed, the result would, from the standpoint of careers for them, be as perplexing as when they failed. Even the few that pass feel disappointed at the fact that offices and appointments do not multiply in proportion to their own needs. The causes of such a situation are easily discovered. In the first place, under the present conditions, enough careers are not thrown open to the sons of the soil. Certain branches, such as the Military branch of the Medical in the upper grade, the Railway, Telegraph, and Customs, etc., are held as preserves for a certain section of the people. The army and the navy, marine and aerial, which find careers for a third of the young men of Britain, are unknown to young Indians. Trade and commerce are little organized. The industrial life of the country is wholly undeveloped. The branch of Life Insurance alone, when properly worked up, will provide vocations to thousands of young men while it may bring untold happiness to millions of families. Philanthropic institutions, such as those that give relief to the poor, the widowed,

the orphans, and the diseased and distressed, and the clergy, afford occupation for an appreciable section of the youth in Western countries. Within the limits permitted to us, however, due emphasis must be laid upon Agriculture as a part of Secondary education, so that the repugnance now felt by the innumerable' failures' to go 'back to the land' may no more complicate the educational problem of the day. The love of the learned professions, and the undue social exaltation which they carry with them, have served to discount the humbler but not less honorable professions involving dignified labour, while the contact with Western culture and conditions has led to the cultivation of outlandish habits in our young men, not unduly condemned by savants like Sir George Birdwood. It is pathetic to find that all the different communities in our land, who evince a growing anxiety to keep pace with those who have stolen a march over them in English education, should be left to discover the bitter truth by their own experiences and disappointments. The supreme need of the hour is the spread of a type of education that helps not merely in a leech-like accumulation of money, but in the creation of wealth, so that the educated man may exploit the resources of the country, dig up the treasures lying hidden in the bosom of the earth and husband those lying on its surface. An adequate knowledge of Mechanical Engineering, which lies at the root of all the modern and memorable triumphs of Science over Nature, can alone help the Indian ryot from his poverty and primitive rusticity. More than all these, the arts and crafts of the country call forth the earnest and immediate attention of the people as they constitute on the one hand the index of national civilization and on the other provide, by patronage extended to them, honorable occupations for millions of men and women. All these reforms can be achieved only by cutting off the bulk of students from a University career,

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which may be ill-fitted for their conditions of life and for which they may be ill-fitted by their tastes and temperament. But this is not all, for by itself it is the one remedy suggested by hostile critics of higher education to Indians. large bulk of the youth should be diverted from the University, to which they merely drift in the absence of other courses, to the various vocations enumerated, and for these the Secondary education now in vogue must be greatly remodelled so as to become comprehensive, elastic and not expensive. Different authorities have at different times made constructive criticisms of the prevailing system. Men like Hardinge and Butler have expressed themselves wholly in favour of vernaculars as media of instruction, but the Philistines among us array themselves in opposition to so healthy a change. Many have advocated the coupling of manual with liberal education, but few indeed are those who focus all the considered opinions and bring them within the range of practical achievement. The initiative cannot obviously come from the official administrators of a rigid and centralised department of education, whose minds are conservative and even bigotted, but must be expected from a Congress of Indian leaders who can bring a fresh view-point to bear on the study of the problem. Then we shall have a reorganised Secondary education complete in itself and capable of training (young men to vari ous walks of life, a proper and spontaneous sifting of material that seeks entrance into the University, less discontent among the youth, and greater prosperity in the country. To achieve such a reformation would be no easy task as that would signify a radical and sympathetic reorganisation entailing alike on Government and people great trouble and expense. That is why the educational problem is really a grave one.

am afraid the Bhagavadgita has not yet been studied solely from the historical point of view. Commentators and authors have generally approached it from the religious and philosophical standpoint and deduced conclusions which are no doubt sound and correct from their aspect. But I believe the ultimate criterion of correctness is the historical view and that the work, if subjected to such a view strictly and carefully, might probably appear to us in a new light. I only say probably because I am aware that the material available for such study is so meagre that we are usually left to surmises, and surmises often lead us to wrong conclusions as much as preconceived biases or notions based on non-historical considerations. I would however yet make this attempt to look at the Bhagavadgita with the historical eye, keeping aside all other notions as far as it is possible for me to do. How far I succeed in this attempt it is of course for the reader to judge.

The first observation I would make, and it is in the nature of a surmise only, is that the Bhagavadgita is a book complete in itself, being the work of one master-mind. It is sometimes suggested that the Bhagavadgita originally consisted of a few slokas only and that the work has gradually increased to its present bulk. But whoever reads the Bhagavadgita through, not once only but many times, and that is the only way of studying the book for oneself, will find that the work is one whole piece fashioned out of the brain of one man. The connections are nowhere broken and no subsequent layers appear. The language is throughout the language of one gifted individual, simple, deep and sonorous. Nay more, the work is singularly united. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. The end sums up the whole book from the beginning and finishes with a preroration as eloquent as any writer might envy. The beginning is the refusal of Arjuna to fight, the middle or climax is the Vishvarupadarshama, or the showing of the universal form of God by Shri- Krishna, and the end is the entire resignation of Arjuna to the will

of Shri-Krishna and his consequent readiness to fight. In my view thus Bhagavadgita stands before us like some beautiful edifice as the Tajmahal, the outcome of one mind, the whole as beautiful in proportion and execution as each individual part is perfect in detail. There is no superaddition or subsequent amendation to mar the beautiful unity of the noble edifice. There is no inconsistent or incongruous substance put in at any subsequent time and at any place. In short, the Bhagavadgita appears to me to be one whole piece fashioned by the brain and hand of one man from beginning to end.

Not so the Mahabharata of which it forms a part. As I have shown in my book entitled "The Mahabharata: A Criticism," that epic seems to be the work of three authors. At least two layers are distinctly visible. I will not repeat here at length what I have said in my book but I will sum up what I have said there and observe that these layers are detectable for four reasons particularly, which may be described as repetition, imitation, anticipation and explanation. We have often the same story repeated as, for example, the षोडशराजीय आख्यान. We have sometimes a great model imitated, e.g., the Bhagavadgita itself is imitated in the Anugita. We have again anticipations like Vyasa's coming in now and then to foretell future events and we have explanations like the many explanatory stories told for the purpose of showing that the polyandrous marriage of Draupadi with five husbands against the general practice was not an offence. These reasons, coupled with the evident desire to exhibit everywhere the powers of descriptions of the last compiler, have increased the bulk of the original Mahabharata of 24,000 slokas to its present length, viz., about one lakh. Now the Bhagavadgita discloses no such attempts at explanation or anticipation, repetition or imitation. It is singularly consistent and measured throughout, and we are led to infer that the Bhagavadgita formed a portion of the original Bharata and not of the present Mahabharata which has been evolved out of it.