l be particularly welcome. Our cities swarm with educated
young men unable to find employment. Although we cannot include them
among our destitute classes, we believe that without turning aside from
our main object, we could do a great deal to help them.

If our scheme grows to the proportions and with the rapidity which we
anticipate, this would in itself absorb large numbers of them. And where
we could do no more we could obtain a moral influence over them and they
would come within the scope of the Advice and Intelligence Bureaux which
are described elsewhere. Constituting as they do the cream of the youth
of India, full of ardent, though often misdirected, enthusiasm, we
should be able to help mould them into happy, independent, prosperous
and loyal citizens, who would be a bulwark to the State, instead of
leaving them to simmer in their present unfortunate circumstances. "To
dig" they don't know, and "to beg" they are ashamed.

They would in their turn I believe give an important impetus to our
scheme and might constitute themselves its fervent apostles helping it
to sweep from end to end of India in less time than it is possible for
us to conceive.

CHAPTER V.

FOOD FOR ALL--THE FOOD DEPOTS.

In England, owing to the severity and uncertainty of the weather, the
food and shelter questions go hand in hand. This is not the case in
India, where the shelter is not so important as the food, and there is
no such urgency in dealing with the former as with the latter. For
instance during nine months out of twelve it is not such a very great
hardship to sleep in the open air in most parts of India. I have myself
done it frequently and so have many of our Officers. It is true that we
should not like it as a regular thing, and still less perhaps, if driven
to it by absolute want. Still I am perfectly prepared to admit that the
circumstances are totally different to that of England, and that the
question of shelter is of secondary importance as compared with food.

The time will come when we shall be obliged to face and deal with it. If
our scheme meets with the success that we anticipate, having first
satisfied the gnawings of these hunger-bitten stomachs, we shall
certainly turn round and think next what we can do to provide them with
decent homes for themselves and their families.

But we can safely afford to defer the consideration of this question for
the present, in order to throw all our time and energy i