them students attending special schools and private secondary and primary schools, the total number of persons under in- struction was approximately 6,000,000 in 1909 and 8,000,000 in 1919. The increase would have been greater but for the deadly influenza epidemic which swept India in the latter year and carried off five millions of the pop., and which for some time would necessarily leave its mark on educational statistics.
Considerable as was the progress shown by the figures, the fact remained that only 5 % of the male pop. and i % of the female pop., or 3% of the whole pop., was undergoing instruction. If primary edugation were as general as in England, the percentage of males under instruction would be 15 instead of five. For India to approximate to the English standard (a standard which is possible only under a compulsory system) , primary schools and teachers for three times the number of boys who were being taught would be necessary. This gives some idea of the magnitude of the task with which the educational reformer in India is faced. While primary education is thus so greatly in defect, the pro- portion of the population receiving university and secondary education compares well with the position in the most advanced Western countries. From the days of the East India Co. the demand of the middle class for education of this type as a means of livelihood has been insistent and increasing. It has been supplied by the State to the limit of its means on very cheap terms, to the comparative neglect of the agricultural and la- bouring classes who, where they were not actively hostile to the school-master, were well content to do without him. " While the lower classes," it is officially stated, " are largely illiterate, the middle class, which is the class that mainly patronizes higher institutions, is, numerically speaking, educated to a pitch equal to that attained in countries whose social and economic condi- tions are more highly developed." In Bengal the proportion of the educated classes who are taking full-time university courses is said to be almost 10 times as great as in England. But much of this so-called collegiate education is really school work of an indifferent kind. The danger of this top-heavy system is now fully realized. The local Governments, with the assistance of liberal grants from the revenues of the central Government, have lately adopted considered schemes for extending and improving primary schools and are laying the foundations of systematic advance. In several provinces arrangements have been made to double the number of places in the primary schools within the next few years. Public opinion in India was not ripe in 1921 for any general scheme of compulsory education. As a first step, municipal boards and other local bodies had been given by law in most provinces permissive powers to enforce the principle within their respective areas, but no great eagerness to make use of them had been shown.
During 1910-^20 expenditure upon education in India had dou- bled. In 1919 it amounted to 8,500,000. Of this 3,600,000 came from general revenues, 1,100,000 from local funds, 1,500,000 from endowments and missionary enterprise, and 2,000,000 from fees. The charge upon general revenues was roughly 3jd. per head of the population. The local Governments may be expected to increase their educational budgets now that their finances have been improved under the new constitution and the department of education has been transferred to a minister responsible to the provincial Legisla- tive Assembly. But the revenues of the provinces are not very elastic, the claims upon them are many, and fresh taxation in India raises many problems. Secondary and university education equally with primary education is in urgent need of a larger allocation of funds than is likely to be forthcoming in any province.
With the publication (1919) of the report of the Calcutta University Commission, higher education in India entered upon a new phase. The Commission was presided over by Sir Michael Sadler. It consisted of seven members, of whom four came direct from England and two were Indians. Its report condemned in emphatic and impressive language the whole system of secondary and university education, as it existed in Bengal, and, subject to qualifications, in other parts of India.
" The university system of Bengal," said the report, " is funda- mentally defective in almost every respect." The system is based on an external examining university and a multitude of affiliated colleges, scattered throughout the country. The Calcutta Univer- sity attempts to deal with 26,000 students. The numbers are beyond
the capacity of a single university organization. The university is loaded with administrative functions which it cannot adequately perform. It rests on the assumption that the passing of examinations is the only thing of value in a university training. The examination standards are low and tend to lower themselves to the capacity of the weakest colleges. The scattered affiliated colleges are for the most part meagrely staffed and equipped; the teachers are gravely underpaid; the methods of instruction are mechanical; the con- ditions under which many of the students live are bad for their health, morals and work. The secondary or high schools which feed the colleges are even more defective, not only as regards teaching but in discipline, social life and healthy surroundings. Many are private-venture schools, managed for the gain of the proprietors at the lowest limit of efficiency. To pass their pupils into the university through the matriculation examination is their one aim. " The high-school training (dominated almost entirely by the matricula- tion examination), while it fails to fit most ot the boys for the university, fails also in fitting them for anything else." With stu- dents entering the university so badly prepared, the teaching in the " intermediate classes " (that is during the two years between matriculation and the intermediate examination) is essentially school and not university work. The Commission would remove these classes from the university to " intermediate " colleges which, to- gether with the high schools, would be placed under a Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education, independent of the univer- sity. The " intermediate " colleges would form the uppermost stage of a reformed and self-contained system of secondary education. Their curriculum would be of a varied kind and would lead up to appropriate examinations, conducted not by the university but by the Board, qualifying for entrance to the university, but also having an independent value as a certificate of general education. Students would enter the university at the stage at present represented by the intermediate examination and at a later age. The university would disencumber itself of two-thirds of the present unwieldy host of 26,000 students, and be set free for its proper duties.
The Commission rightly placed a radical reform of secondary education in the forefront of its proposals. As to the university, it would reconstitute it as a teaching university with a multi- collegiate organization, and give it a new constitution. It looked forward to the best of the affiliated colleges becoming in course of time independent universities. In the meantime, it would estab- lish a teaching university at Dacca. Effect was given to this last recommendation, but the rest of the programme, involving an annual expenditure of 500,000 and a non-recurrent expenditure of an equal amount, remained in abeyance in 1921 owing to the financial difficulties of the Bengal Government. Other provinces accepted the principles of the report and proposed to apply them. The laws passed in the United Provinces for establishing teaching and resi- dential universities at Lucknow and Aligarh (the Moslem University) bear unmistakable marks of the recommendations of the Commission.
THE INDIAN ARMY
The army in India is composed of British regular troops, which form part of the British army transferred for a period of service to the Indian establishment, and of the Indian army. The latter consists of Indian troops, raised in India by the Indian Govern- ment, and commanded by Indian officers (native officers as they are called) holding the viceroy's commission, and by British officers holding the king's commission. Under recent arrange- ments a certain number of king's commissions in the Indian army are now given to Indians; in some cases in recognition of dis- tinguished service in the Indian army and by way of promotion, and in others to young men of good education on condition of their undergoing training in England at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. The numerical proportion in which the two compo- nent parts of the army in India should stand to each other was fixed in the first instance in 1858, when the Crown assumed responsibility for the government and defence of India. It was further considered in 1893, when the rapid advance of Russia in Central Asia gave rise to anxiety for the security of India. The ratio of one British soldier to 2-5 Indian soldiers was then def- initely adopted and has since been adhered to as the permanent basis of the army in India, though liable in emergencies, as in the World War, when India was for a time almost denuded of British troops, to be departed from. The proportion is struck on the regular forces, including the imperial service troops main- tained by native states. No account is taken, on the one hand, of the Auxiliary Force, which is recruited on a voluntary system from the European and Eurasian community, or, on the other hand, of the reserves of the Indian army, the Indian territorial force, the armed police or the armies of the native states.
The British troops are necessarily the most costly part of the
