ved a
certain training in _savoir faire_ through the collective necessities of
school life, and a certain sharpening in the arts of advocacy through
the debating society. Except for these latter helps, they have had to
face the world with minds neither more braced, nor more trained, nor
more informed than any "uneducated" man's.

Surely the first condition that should be laid down for the new
education in Europe is that whatever is undertaken must be undertaken in
grim earnest and done. It is ridiculous to talk about the
"character-forming" value of any study that does not go through to an
end. Manifestly Greek must be dropped as a part of the general
curriculum for a highly educated man, for the simple reason that now
there are scarcely any competent teachers, and because the sham of
teaching it partially and pretentiously demoralises student and school
alike. The claim of the clergy and so forth to "know" Greek is one of
the many corrupting lies in British intellectual life. English comic
writers never weary of sneering at the Hindu who claimed to be a "failed
B.A.," but what is the ordinary classical degree man of an English
university but a "failed" Greek scholar? Latin, too, must be either
reduced to the position of a study supplementary to the native tongue,
or brought up to an honest level of efficiency.

French and German in the case of the English, and English in the case
of the French and Russians, are essentially governess languages; any
intelligent boy or girl from a reasonably prosperous home ought to be
able to read, write, and speak either before fifteen; they are to be
taken by the way rather than regarded as a fundamental part of
education. The French, German, or English literature and literary
development up to and including contemporary work is, of course, an
entirely different matter. But there can be no doubt of the great
educational value of some highly inflected and well-developed language
_taught by men to whom it is a genuine means of expression_. Educational
needs and public necessity point alike to such languages as Russian or,
in the case of Great Britain, Hindustani to supply this sound training.

If Great Britain means business after this war, if she is to do her duty
by the Eastern world she controls, she will not stick at the petty
expense of getting a few hundreds of good Russian and Hindu teachers
into the country, and she will place Russian and Hindustani upon at
least an equal foot