"All efforts to promote female education have hitherto encountered peculiar difficulties. These difficulties arise chiefly from the customs of the people themselves. The material considerations, which have formed a contributing factor in the spread of boys' schools, are inoperative in the case of girls. The natural and laudable desire for education as an end in itself, which is evinced by the upper and middle classes as regards their sons, is no match for the conservative instincts of the Mahomedans, the system of early marriage among the Hindus, and the rigid seclusion of women which is a characteristic of both. These causes prevent any but the most elementary education from being given to girls. The lack of female teachers and the alleged unsuitability of the curriculum, which is asserted to have been framed more with a view to the requirements of boys than those of girls, form subsidiary reasons or excuses against more rapid progress. To these difficulties may be added the belief, perhaps more widely felt than expressed, that the general education of women means a social revolution, the extent of which cannot be foreseen. 'Indian gentlemen,' it has been well said, 'may thoroughly allow that when the process has been completed, the nation will rise in intelligence, in character and in all the graces of life. But they are none the less apprehensive that while the process of education is going on, while the lessons of emancipation are being learnt and stability has not yet been reached, while, in short, society is slowly struggling to adjust itself to the new conditions, the period of transition will be marked by the loosening of social ties, the upheaval of customary ways, and by prolonged and severe domestic embarrassment.' There is, it is true, an advanced section of the community that is entirely out of sympathy with this view. In abandoning child-marriage they have got rid of the chief obstacle to female education; and it is among them, consequently, that female education has made proportionately the greatest progress in quantity and still more in quality. But outside this small and well-marked class, the demand for female education is much less active and spontaneous.... In fact the people at large encourage or tolerate the education of their girls only up to an age and up to a standard at which it can do little good, or, according to their point of view, little harm." NOTE 22 THE THEORY OF THE "DRAIN." The Master of Elibank, then Under-Secretary of State, included in his Indian Budget speech on Aug. 5, 1909, a brief but effective refutation of the "drain" theory:--