certain sooner or later to
carry its own punishment with it. In the second place, the Forest
Department, which is of very special importance in Burma, is a good deal
crippled by the "want of energy and want of industry which are
unfortunately common in the subordinate grades. The reason for this
state of things is to be found in the fact that the pay and prospects
are not good enough to attract really capable men." In many quarters,
notably in Central Africa, British Treasury officials have yet to learn
that, from every point of view, it is quite as great a mistake to employ
underpaid administrative agents as it would be for an employer of labour
to proceed on the principle that low wages necessarily connote cheap
production.

Sir George Scott in his introduction strikes a very different note from
that sounded by M. Dautremer. He alleges that the wealthy province of
Burma, which M. Dautremer tells us is not unseldom called "the milch-cow
of India," is starved, that its financial policy has been directed by
"cautious, nothing-venture, mole-horizon people," who have hid their
talent in a napkin; that "everything seems expressly designed to drive
out the capital" of which the country stands so much in need; that not
nearly enough has been done in the way of expenditure on public works,
notably on roads and railways, and that when these latter have been
constructed, they have sometimes been in the wrong directions. He cavils
at M. Dautremer's description of Burma as "a model possession," and
holds that "as a matter of bitter fact, the administrative view is that
of the parish beadle, and the enterprise that of the country-carrier
with a light cart instead of a motor-van."

It would require greater local knowledge than any possessed by the
writer of the present article either to endorse or to reject these
formidable accusations, although it may be said that the violence of Sir
George Scott's invective is not very convincing, but rather raises a
strong suspicion that he has overstated his case. Nothing is more
difficult, either for a private individual or for a State financier,
than to decide the question of when to be bold and when cautious in the
matter of capital outlay. It is quite possible to push to an extreme the
commonplace, albeit attractive, argument that large expenditure will be
amply remunerative, or even if not directly remunerative, highly
beneficial "in the long run." Although this plea is often--indeed,
pe