Competitive examinations are a fetish which Government worships because it is afraid of taking the responsibility of appointing officers on its own initiative. It is afraid of the charge of nepotism. But it would not be nepotism to give the sons of its officers, Civil and Military, first chance of appointments in the Police. It would be a graceful recognition of the fact that when a man has spent his life in India he has lost touch with England and cannot get his sons placed at home, therefore he deserves consideration for them from the Government he has served. I do not believe in heredity in such matters because there is no evidence in its favour; but I do believe in early associations and traditions. Now the traditions and associations of the sons of officers who have served in India are with India. I believe that a much sounder way would be to appoint sons of officers who have served in India. They have Indian traditions, and, what is more, having as children learned the language it soon returns to them. I know this as a fact. Some twenty-five years ago in Upper Burma a young police-officer was sent to the same station with me in Burma. He came direct from India, but had been born and brought up in Burma till he was seven, when he went to England to school. From England, at eighteen or nineteen, he went to India--the Punjab, I think--and was appointed to the Police there. When Upper Burma was in need of officers he was sent to Burma on promotion. On arrival he did not remember a word of Burmese, but it came rapidly back to him. When sitting with me when I was talking to the Burmese he would continually say to me, "Didn't you say so-and-so?" and "Didn't he answer so-and-so?" Without learning it, his memory recalled the language to him, and in a month or two he was talking it well and with a good accent. There remain the Subordinate Civil Service and the Lower Grades of the Police, all or nearly all of whom are native to the Province. In another book, writing on this subject, I said: "I read and hear continually that many of our native magistrates and judges and police are corrupt. I am told they take bribes, that they falsify cases, that they make right into wrong. I wish to say that I have no belief in such charges. Exceptions there may be, but that the mass of our Burman fellow-officers are honest I have no doubt." All my experience has tended to support that view. Everyone in the world requires looking after, requires check and supervision, requires that protection between himself and harm that only a watching eye can give, and in Burma, for the Burmese officials, these safeguards hardly exist. It must be remembered that official Burma has no Press to criticise it, no native society to give it tone, no organised community to help the individual in the right path. He has many temptations, and a fall is easy.