questions at issue to which both I
and the Governor-General attach the greatest importance. My Lords, I
thank you for your attention, and I beg to move the Second Reading.

VIII

INDIAN PROBATIONERS

(OXFORD. JUNE 13, 1909)

[The Vice Chancellor of Oxford University and the teachers of the
Indian Civil Service probationers gave a dinner to the probationers
on Saturday at the New Masonic Hall, Oxford, to meet the Secretary of
State for India. The Vice Chancellor was in the chair]

It is a great honour that it should fall to me to be the first
Secretary of State to address this body of probationers and others.
Personally I am always delighted at any reason, good or bad, that
brings me to Oxford. A great deal of Cherwell water has flowed under
Magdalen Bridge, since I was an undergraduate here, and I have a
feeling of nostalgia, when I think of Oxford and come to Oxford. The
reminiscences of one's younger days are apt to have in older times an
ironical tinge, but that is not for any of you to-day to consider. I
am glad to know that of the fifty odd members of the Civil Service who
are going out this autumn, not less than half are Oxford men, nearly
all of them, Oxford bred, and even the three or four who are not
Oxford bred, are practically, so far as can be, Oxford men. Now I will
go a little wider. An Indian Minister is rather isolated in the
public eye, amid the press and bustle of the political energies,
perplexities, interests, and partisan passions that stir and
concentrate attention on our own home affairs. Yet let me assure you
that there is no ordinary compensation for that isolation in the
breast of an Indian Minister. He finds the richest compensation in
the enormous magnitude and endless variety of all the vast field of
interests, present and still more future, that are committed to his
temporary charge. Though his charge may be temporary, I should think
every Secretary of State remembers that even in that fugitive span he
may either do some good or, if he is unhappy, he may do much harm.

This week London has been enormously excited by the Imperial Press
Conference. I was rather struck by the extraordinarily small
attention, almost amounting to nothing, that was given to the Dominion
that you here are concerned with. No doubt an Imperial Conference
raises one or two very delicate questions, as to whether common
citizenship is to be observed, or whether the relations between India
and the Coloni