"There must, I urge, be a devolution of definite powers on electorates. The officers of Government[135] must give every possible help and advice to the new authorities, for which those authorities may ask. They must act as their foster-mothers, not as stepmothers. But if the new authorities are to learn the art of responsible government, they must be free from control from above. Not otherwise will they learn to feel themselves responsible to the electorate below. Nor will the electorates themselves learn that the remedy for their sufferings rests in their own hands. Suffering there will be, and it is only by suffering, self-inflicted and perhaps long endured, that a people will learn the faculty of self-help, and genuine electorates be brought into being.... "I am proud to think that England has conferred immeasurable good on India by creating order and showing Indians what orderly government means. But, this having been done, I do not believe the system can now be continued as it is, without positive damage to the character of the people. The burden of trusteeship must be transferred, piece by piece, from the shoulders of Englishmen to those of Indians in some sort able to bear it. Their strength and numbers must be developed. But that can be done by the exercise of actual responsibility steadily increased as they can bear it. It cannot be done by any system of school-teaching, though such teaching is an essential concomitant of the process. "The goal now set by the recent announcement of the Secretary of State[136] will only be reached through trouble. Yet troublous as the times before us may be, we have at last reached that stage of our work in India which is truly consonant with our own traditions. The task is one worthy of this epoch in our history, if only because it calls for the effacement of ourselves."[137] Mr. Curtis's concluding words foreshadow a process which is to-day actually going on, not only in India but in other parts of the East as well. The Great War has so strengthened Eastern nationalist aspirations and has so weakened European power and prestige that a widespread relaxing of Europe's hold over the Orient is taking place. This process may make for good or for ill, but it is apparently inevitable; and a generation (perhaps a decade) hence may see most of the Near and Middle East autonomous or even independent. Whether the liberated peoples will misuse their opportunities and fall into despotism or anarchy, or whether they succeed in establishing orderly, progressive, constitutional governments, remains to be seen. We have examined the factors, pro and con. Let us leave the problem in the only way in which to-day it can scientifically be left--on a note of interrogation. FOOTNOTES: [111] T. Morison, _Imperial Rule in India_, p. 43 (London, 1899). [112] Quoted from Arminius Vambery, _Western Culture in Eastern Lands_, pp. 305-306 (London, 1906).