says that
education and kindred benefits conferred by British rule will not, of
themselves, "avail to prepare Indians for the task of responsible
government. On the contrary, education will prove a danger and positive
mischief, unless accompanied by a definite instalment of political
responsibility. It is in the workshops of actual experience alone that
electorates will acquire the art of self-government, however highly
educated they may be.

"There must, I urge, be a devolution of definite powers on electorates.
The officers of Government[135] must give every possible help and advice
to the new authorities, for which those authorities may ask. They must
act as their foster-mothers, not as stepmothers. But if the new
authorities are to learn the art of responsible government, they must be
free from control from above. Not otherwise will they learn to feel
themselves responsible to the electorate below. Nor will the electorates
themselves learn that the remedy for their sufferings rests in their own
hands. Suffering there will be, and it is only by suffering,
self-inflicted and perhaps long endured, that a people will learn the
faculty of self-help, and genuine electorates be brought into being....

"I am proud to think that England has conferred immeasurable good on
India by creating order and showing Indians what orderly government
means. But, this having been done, I do not believe the system can now
be continued as it is, without positive damage to the character of the
people. The burden of trusteeship must be transferred, piece by piece,
from the shoulders of Englishmen to those of Indians in some sort able
to bear it. Their strength and numbers must be developed. But that can
be done by the exercise of actual responsibility steadily increased as
they can bear it. It cannot be done by any system of school-teaching,
though such teaching is an essential concomitant of the process.

"The goal now set by the recent announcement of the Secretary of
State[136] will only be reached through trouble. Yet troublous as the
times before us may be, we have at last reached that stage of our work
in India which is truly consonant with our own traditions. The task is
one worthy of this epoch in our history, if only because it calls for
the effacement of ourselves."[137]

Mr. Curtis's concluding words foreshadow a process which is to-day
actually going on, not only in India but in other parts of the East as
well. The Great War h