scholastic opportunities for the girls. In consonance with this spirit, small academies especially meant for female children are now dotted all over the Punjab. These institutions have an excellent prototype in the Sikh Kanya Mahavidyalaya at Ferozepore, the best of its kind maintained by the community, and about as good as any high school for girls in the Province or in the country. The Sikh Kanta Mahavidyalaya is the handiwork of a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Takht Singh, who entirely gave themselves up to the cause of feminine emancipation. Unfortunately, Mrs. Takht Singh suddenly died some time ago, but her husband is devoting himself to the school. He has been able, by personal effort, to collect what is considered a large sum in India, with which he has been able to build two wings of a huge structure for the purpose of holding classes and serving as a hostel for the students. With commendable zeal he is now working to collect the funds to complete the building and to provide a large endowment fund. The syllabus of study was planned by the late Mrs. Takht Singh, who, with singular intelligence, adapted the curriculum to the exigencies of the life of the modern Indian girl, and the course, therefore, is of a nature calculated to fit the pupil to be a good housewife in addition to being a cultured companion to her husband, and a useful member of the Church as well as of society in general.

To give stimulus to educational activity, yearly the Sikh Educational Conference meets in some big city of the Punjab. It is largely attended by men and women, some of whom journey hundreds of miles to be present at the sessions. A very interesting feature of the sittings during the past few years has been the enthusiasm of the members of the fair sex, who have been so stirred by the speeches that they have torn off their ornaments and given them to help swell the funds for providing educational facilities for Sikh children. Since the Indian woman loves ornaments with a greater passion than even her sister of the Occident, the genuineness of the Sikh revival is very strongly marked by the self-sacrifice implied by the contributions thus offered.

SAINT NIHAL SINGH.

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA PROBLEM: A

STUDY IN APPLIED SOCIOLOGY.

THE visit of our King to India, and his presence at the Durbar, would seem to make the present moment a peculiarly opportune one for considering the problem of Indian administration in general and in particular, from a somewhat fresh standpoint. The subject is a very complex and difficult one, and my only reason for venturing to take any part in the discussion of it is that by means of it, as a supremely interesting object-lesson, I may help to persuade my readers to adopt with me the general principle of approaching all practical political problems. whatever, of any range, difficulty, or complexity, from the more varied sidelights that are to be thrown on them by the recent but already militant science of Sociology. But as my space is limited, and my aim is severely practical, it is necessary, if I am to carry the reader with me without confusion through the tangled thickets and perplexities of my theme, that I should present its subject-matter through the medium of some single central problem which shall envisage and focus all the great converging political, religious, and social influences which play in, through, and around it, in their relative degrees of subordination and importance.

Now this central problem, it seems to me, is this: How or by what happy chances has it come about that a handful of men of a different race, colour, language, and creed, should have been enabled to hold in subjection for over a century, and with scarcely a break (save during the short and sinister period of the Mutiny), some three hundred millions of alien peoples, by the mere touch of a wand, as it were? It is a phenomenon unique in the history of the world; for if we compare it with Imperial Rome, who came nearest to us in the ease of her administration of subjectnations, we shall find that whereas during the period of Roman Imperial supremacy the Temple of Janus was for centuries rarely shut; with us in India, on the contrary, it has rarely been open. It looks, therefore, as if we must have been peculiarly favoured by the gods somewhere in this our easy domination; and if the reader will permit me to institute a rough point by point comparison between Rome and ourselves in this matter, it will be seen that in each case, not only some, but all the dice have been loaded in our favour. But besides, our brief survey will enable us to see more clearly the supreme political (and not mere

ceremonial) importance of the presence of our King and his crowning at the Durbar; it will, or ought to, enable us to estimate at their proper value, and to handle more easily in the future, such unseemly outbreaks of bomb-throwing and assassination as those that marked the late period of unrest among the Europeanised Brahmins in Bengal and elsewhere; and finally, it ought to help us to devise means and methods for making our supremacy still more assured and our rule more beneficial to the peoples of India as a whole. But before we can get a grip of all this tangled promiscuity of causes and conditions we must keep steadily in sight that they are all variously-facetted applications of the one great Roman Imperial principle of Divide et Impera, the ease or difficulty of whose application, indeed, may well stand as a fixed gauge or measure of the success of those Imperial régimes who have had to administer it.

In the first place, then, Rome, except during her conquest of the rest of Italy, was separated from her conquered Provinces by seas and mountain ranges requiring long and costly expeditions to get in touch with them when they turned restive or rebelled. British vice-regal supremacy in India, on the contrary, is seated in the midst of its subject provinces, and with modern facilities of communication can lay its hands on the beginnings of conspiracy at any moment. In the second place, the provinces over which the great Roman Peace obtained were situated mainly around an inland sea, the Mediterranean, but were unprotected in their rear against whole tribes and nations, barbarians and civilised, on and over their borders-tribes and nations so inaccessible to treaties, reason, or force, as to require whole armies of occupation to permanently hold them in subjection. Indeed, of all the thirty or thirty-five legions required to defend the Roman supremacy, most of them were stationed on the Rhine and Danube to check the Barbarian incursions. But in spite of it all, they ever remained a menace, neither to be bought, subdued, nor appeased; and in the end brought on the downfall of the Empire. Compared with this, the British Supremacy in India has been easy, for never at any time has it cost us much to defend ourselves against outside foes; inasmuch as with the Himalayas in the north, and the sea around the rest of the Peninsula, secure in the supremacy of our fleet, we have been relieved from all anxiety except from the Afghan and other petty Frontier Tribes.

In the third place, the nations under the Roman Imperial sway were segregated for the most part in large homogeneous masses around the shores of a wide range of sea, and had each been compacted for ages into definite, unified Nationalities, each

under its own Prince or King. But as they were all alike held for tribute; and as this tribute became more and more oppressive as the years went on; these kings and princes were able to unite easily against their common enemy, if for a moment the eye or sword of the master was diverted or withdrawn. And the consequence was, that the task of keeping them divided, which was Rome's one principle, and, indeed, her one ultimate means of keeping her hold over any of them, was attended with increasing labour, anxiety, and expense. This was seen very markedly during the disturbances at Rome between the Senate and people in the time of the Gracchi, and later during the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, and of Cæsar and Pompey, when many of these large and relatively homogeneous States in Asia, Macedonia, Africa, and Greece (unrelated to each other except in their common servitude to Rome), joined forces in combinations of twos or threes against her. And particularly was this seen when she relaxed the strictness and rigour of her governing principle, as was the case in the earlier period of her rule in Macedonia and Greece (for the latter of whom, as her teacher, she always had a secret admiration and even tenderness); but with this consequence, that a large part of her conquering work there had to be done over again. Now in India, on the contrary, there was none of this homogeneity and segregation of States or peoples. Mahommedan princes ruled over subjects largely Hindoo; Mahratta chiefs conquered and governed large masses of sullen and rebellious Mahommedans; while Sikhs, Parsees, Pathans, and half-bred Bengalees were mixed indiscriminately in, between, or around them. So that when the British entered on their Supremacy, a large part of the divisions and antagonisms needed to make supremacy easy for a conqueror, was already done to their hand. As for the Peoples themselves over whom these chiefs ruled, they were in a still more hopeless plight for purposes of rebellion against a foreign conqueror. They were so triturated, mixed up, and ground together on the same areas, and so glued to their places there by overcrowding and poverty, that like the mixed pigments on a painter's palette, they were unable to separate themselves out again to unite with their fellows elsewhere; so that, what with their antagonisms in religion, race, language, custom, or caste, almost every man's hand was against his neighbour, and like envenomed serpents trapped, they hissed and spat in each other's faces in the village streets as they passed! So that while the Romans were only able to keep divided their large homogeneous and segregated provinces, each separately and by itself, with the greatest vigilance, anxiety, and expense; all that the British had to do when they had fully

entered on their supremacy in India, was to let these poor unfortunate mixed and congested victims of historical conditions and malign fate, by their own antagonisms strangle each other's powers of resistance; while they, as conquerors, in easy triumph could put up their swords, and look on. Now it may be objected, I am aware, that huge Imperialisms like those of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome, won or lost their supremacy by single great pitched battles over the large homogeneous States which they ruled; and that as Rome, by the superior organisation of her legion over that of the Macedonian phalanx, or over the Barbarian arrows and spears, was almost sure to win the day anyway, in every encounter, that therefore she must not only have made her way to supremacy, but should afterwards have held it more easily than we have done in India, and that, because in ancient times when once their despotic kings were conquered, the peoples owning their sway submitted en masse like sheep. This, of course, is true, and is impossible in India.

It may also be objected that if the peoples of India could not unite politically against the foreigner, owing to their conglomerate admixture and minute subdivisions of race and language, they could unite on Religion at least, and oppose a united front to the invader. Now I will frankly admit at once, that were all India, with its three hundred millions, Hindoo in its religion, or all India Mahommedan, we should not be there for an hour; but should with our mere handful of men be driven into the sea, either by passive resistance, conspiracy, or the sword. But the point is, that with a people with whom Religion is the guiding principle and soul of their lives, the fewer the religions and the greater the numbers of devotees attached to each (especially if they are Monotheisms, and have Sacred Books), the more fierce is their antagonism to one another, and the more difficult is it for them to combine to throw off the yoke of the conqueror. And accordingly, with fifty million Mahommedans, with the Koran and the dream (if not the reality) of the sword in their hands, confronting two hundred millions of Hindoos equally tenacious and devoted to their own religion, all we have to do again is to stand by, put up our swords, and look on; while they mutually block, neutralise, or frustrate each other. So that here again in the ease of our supremacy we have the advantage over Imperial Rome. But why did this not hold with the Religions of the Roman Provinces as well? the reader will ask. The reason is that all those ancient nations over whom Rome ruled were Pagan Polytheisms, with the single exception of the Jews, whereas the religions of India are all practically Mono