Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
The new Viceroy, who himself belongs to one of the most important
branches of the British Civil Service, may be trusted to display in his
handling of the British civilian the tact and sympathy required to
sustain him in the performance of arduous duties which are bound to
become more complex and exacting as our system of government departs
further from the old patriarchal type. Our task in India must grow more
and more difficult, and will demand more than ever the best men that we
can give to its accomplishment. The material prizes which an Indian
career has to offer may be fewer and less valuable, whilst the pressure
of work, the penalties of exile, the hardship of frequent separation
from kith and kin, the drawbacks of an always trying and often
treacherous climate, will for the most part not diminish. But the many
sided interests and the real magnitude and loftiness of the work to be
done in India will continue to attract the best Englishmen so long as
they can rely upon fair treatment at the hands of the Mother Country. If
that failed them there would speedily be an end not only to the Indian
Civil Service, but to British rule itself. For the sword cannot govern,
only maintain government, and can maintain it only as long as government
itself retains the respect and acquiescence of the great masses of the
Indian peoples which have been won, not by generals or by Secretaries of
State, or even by Viceroys, but by the patient and often obscure
spadework of the Indian Civil Service--by its integrity, its courage,
its knowledge, its efficiency, and its unfailing sense of justice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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