Indeed, some Western observers of the Orient, particularly colonial officials, have been so much impressed by the political and social dangers arising from the existence of this "literate proletariat" of semi-educated failures that they are tempted to condemn the whole venture of Western education in the East as a mistake. Lord Cromer, for example, was decidedly sceptical of the worth of the Western-educated Egyptian,[250] while a prominent Anglo-Indian official names as the chief cause of Indian unrest, "the system of education, which we ourselves introduced--advisedly so far as the limited vision went of those responsible; blindly in view of the inevitable consequences."[251] Yet these pessimistic judgments do not seem to make due allowance for the inescapable evils attendant on any transition stage. Other observers of the Orient have made due allowance for this factor. Vambery, for instance, notes the high percentage of honest and capable native officials in the British Indian and French North African civil service (the bulk of these officials, of course, Western-educated men), and concludes: "Strictly conservative Orientals, and also fanatically inclined Europeans, think that with the entrance of our culture the primitive virtues of the Asiatics have been destroyed, and that the uncivilized Oriental was more faithful, more honest, and more reliable than the Asiatic educated on European principles. This is a gross error. It may be true of the half-educated, but not of the Asiatic in whose case the intellectual evolution is founded on the solid basis of a thorough, systematic education."[252] And, whatever may be the ills attendant upon Western education in the East, is it not the only practicable course to pursue? The impact of Westernism upon the Orient is too ubiquitous to be confined to books. Granting, therefore, for the sake of argument, that colonial governments could have prevented Western education in the formal sense, would not the Oriental have learned in other ways? Surely it is better that he should learn through good texts under the supervision of qualified teachers, rather than tortuously in perverted--and more dangerous--fashion. The importance of Western education in the East is nowhere better illustrated than in the effects it is producing in ameliorating the status of women. The depressed condition of women throughout the Orient is too well known to need elaboration. Bad enough in Mohammedan countries, it is perhaps at its worst among the Hindus of India, with child-marriage, the virtual enslavement of widows (burned alive till prohibited by English law), and a seclusion more strict even than that of the "harem" of Moslem lands. As an English writer well puts it: "'Ladies first,' we say in the West; in the East it is 'ladies last.' That sums up succinctly the difference in the domestic ideas of the two civilizations."[253]