"Is it not a sad thing," writes the Indian barrister--we quote his words because they seem to us worthy of notice at home--"that a Christian Government is unable to legislate to save the children of Temple women? I am sorry my opinion has made you sad. Giving my opinion as a lawyer, I could not take an optimistic view of the matter. _The law as it stands at present is against reform in matters of this kind._ Even should a good judge take a strong view of the matter, the High Court will stick to the very letter of the law." So that, as things are, it comes to this: We must stand aside and watch the cup of poison being prepared--so openly prepared that everyone knows for which child it is being mixed. We must stand and wait and do nothing. We must see the little girl led up to the cup and persuaded to taste it. We must watch her gradually growing to like it, for it is flavoured and sweet. We must not beckon to her before she has drunk of it and say, "Come to us and we will tell you what is in that cup, and keep you safely from those who would make you drink it"; for "any attempt to induce the child to come to you, or any assistance given to help her to escape to you, would render you liable to prosecution for kidnapping--a criminal offence under the Penal Code." Any one of us would gladly go to prison if it would save the child; but the trouble is, it would not: for the law could only return her to her lawful guardians from whose hold we unlawfully detached her. We, not they, would be in the wrong; they did nothing unlawful in only preparing the cup. Does someone say that we put the case unfairly--that the law does not forbid us to warn the child, it only forbids us to snatch her away when the cup is merely being offered her? But remember, in our part of India at least, these cups are not given in public. The preparation is public enough, the bare tasting is public too; but the cup in its fulness is given in private, and once given, the poison works with stealthy but startling rapidity. Warn the child before she has drunk of it, and she does not understand you. Warn her after she has drunk, and the poison holds her from heeding.