as repugnant as to the higher classes the breach effected in the seclusion of the harem by the appearance of women in public life, or the appointment of a notorious agnostic to the high office of Sheik-ul-Islam.

To the non-Turkish Mahomedans the subordination of Pan-Islamism to Turkish Nationalism must be even more repellent. Under the stress of war the Pan-Turanians profess themselves willing to allow the Arabs of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco complete independence in their own affairs, and even to respect the 'cultural' rights of the Arabs in Asiatic Turkey. But the offer comes too late, for Mecca, the shrine par excellence of all Arab Mahomedan aspirations, has already thrown off the Turkish yoke; the Arabs of Mesopotamia and Palestine have welcomed their British liberators; the whole of Syria impatiently awaits their approach; and the Arab populations of Northern Africa have remained deaf throughout the war to Pan-Islamic appeals from Constantinople. Are any Arabs likely to listen to the voice of a charmer who lays a sacrilegious hand on the Koran, banishes all the cultural' influences of Arabic from his own tongue, and openly declares that the Turks' idea of God is different from that of the Arabs, and that, with the profound differences which exist between the social life of Semitic Arabs and that of the Mongolian Turks, it is impossible for the Turks to accept the Arab interpretation of the Mahomedan religion? Will the Persians, who are Shiahs, and cannot therefore for a moment entertain the claims of a Khalif who is a Turk and a Sunni to the spiritual headship of Islam, be any more willing to accept a temporal overlordship based on the supremacy of Turkish nationalism? There is, it is true, a community of race between the Turks and the Azerbaijanis and other populations of Northern Persia, where the lower classes speak a Turkish dialect; but even there the upper classes are as proud of their national tongue and their national literature as the pure Persians of Isfahan and Shiraz. The whole nationalist movement in Persia during the last decade clashes at every point, except for a momentary coincidence of political animosities, with Turkish nationalism; and, if the Kajar dynasty has fretted under the alien tutelage which it brought upon itself by its own incompetency and misrule, is it likely

that, when the downfall of Russia has automatically brought that tutelage to an end, the Shah will put his head voluntarily into a still tighter Turkish noose?

Nor is Pan-Turanianism likely to appeal to the Ameer of Afghanistan, who has always taken pride in styling himself Malik-ul-Islam or King of Islam. Its 'cultural' claims will certainly be entirely wasted on the wild tribesmen of Central Asia, though their ignorant fanaticism may be more easily duped by its appeal to their religion and by the encouragement it will doubtless willingly give to all the appetites which Russian rule has hitherto curbed. Amongst Indian Mahomedans one may safely assume that the very slight impression made by Abdul Hamid's Pan-Islamic propaganda, already weakened before the war by the Turkish Revolution and the dubious orthodoxy of the Young Turks, will prove to have been entirely wiped out both by Turkey's active cooperation with Germany in a war of which they have shared the sacrifices and the glories with the whole British Empire, and by the open substitution of nationalist for Islamic ideals in the Pan-Turanian programme.

Unless the power of the ruling clique in Constantinople is finally crushed during the war, Pan-Turanianism may be a disturbing element for many years to come in Western and Central Asia. But it cannot conceivably repair the breach which its alliance with Pan-Germanism has made in the House of Islam, so long as the vast majority of the world's Mahomedans, who have loyally stood to their allegiance to the Western Powers in the face of Turkey and turned deaf ears to the Jehad she has vainly presumed to preach, have a firm and continued assurance that their religion is as safe in the hands of their non-Mahomedan rulers as are their temporal interests.

VALENTINE CHIROL.

Art. 12.-CHILD EDUCATION IN INDIA.

THE national life of a people is embodied in the manner of its education. The schooling and apprenticeship which it evolves for the training and discipline of its youth are a mirror reflecting national ideals and aspirations, national aims and beliefs. By looking to the system of learning under which a student grows from childhood to maturity we discover the material from which his thought is fed, the purposes and relative values which his mind is trained to accept. The ideal education is a continuous development, building-up the firm chain of succession, establishing harmoniously the sense of causation and sequence, the strength of united purpose and action, and the value and importance of combination. Where national life is normal and consistent, we find educational methods correspondingly continuous and natural, expressing, as well as forming, the temper of the people. Accepting this view of education as a national function, we recognise that the principles of education must be constantly challenged, its practice constantly revised, according to the changing demands of the times. The lessons of recent experience have emphasised this necessity for vigilance; and the problems of education must be faced with equal regard for the needs of individual self-development, of vocational efficiency and of national service.

The need of wisdom and foresight in inaugurating revised educational methods in India is proportionately more urgent than with us, as the difficulties to be met are more intricate and complex. The system of school and college education which has the authority of official sanction, and constitutes the direct approach to public life and office, has hitherto been built up on English models. Hence the tendency, among those to whom the task of educational administration in British India is entrusted, has been to discuss its problems on lines almost parallel with those of modern England, to assume similar difficulties and no others, and to search for similar solutions to those difficulties. Here, in England, the educational questions of the moment may seem to be debated almost exclusively with a view to school curricula and university courses, but it must be remembered

that the years of nursery' and 'kindergarten' training, when imagination is most vigorous, observation most acute, memory most retentive, are provided for by an inherited discipline which political problems have never touched, and by a development which our national reawakening, combined with the more scientific methods of the modern teaching art, has splendidly enriched. The policy of education in India, which has accepted an exotic and arbitrary scheme as the basis of school and collegiate learning, of necessity precludes any continuity of mental training between the stages of childhood and student life; and the preliminary period of child develop, ment has been, as a result, almost entirely neglected. Now, this period is manifestly of the highest importance for all subsequent growth, since, during these early years, the faculties of sense must be awakened and disciplined, perceptions and powers of discrimination developed, direction given to mental habits which will determine the course they take during adolescent and adult life. What the preparing of the soil is in horticulture-and without it all later effort may be in great measure unproductive-that is the training of the child, at home and in the class-room, in lesson and in game, in the higher culture of human development.

Experience and observation of the particular needs of child training have led, in practically every country of the West, to similar conclusions. Lessons of obedience can begin with infancy; and a wise mother or trained nurse can encourage in the infant, even before it can speak, rudimentary instincts of regularity, method and self-control, as well as intelligent response to certain outside influences and impressions. Recognition of the rights of others can be implanted in babyhood; system may be observed in games as well as in the daily routine of living. In the next stage the child's restless mental and bodily activity is regulated and developed by occupations that interest and hold the attention. The most recent cultivation of music as an active experience-a rediscovery of the true and original purposes of the musical art-is now becoming recognised as an æsthetic discipline and culture of the widest influence. Eye and ear are further trained in drawing and nature-study; and manual dexterity is acquired in many practical

branches of handicraft. The vast literature of childhood, ranging from the simpler stories and rhymes of legend or fancy, through epic tales of valour and romance, to the striving, suffering and accomplishment of saints or heroes, peoples the child-mind with ideas of permanent value, gives understanding of human nature and conduct, and implants the conception of honour and self-sacrifice. So trained, the child of, say, from seven to nine years of age, who may, perhaps, have learned no actual lessons, has progressed far in culture and education, has acquired a standard (though not yet conscious) in art, literature, and conduct, and is truly prepared, in the coming years of school-life, not merely to learn but to discriminate, select, and use his individual judgment. These are critical years of infant and child life, not merely in the houses of the wealthy but, more or less, in every representative class of life. The teacher may be mother, nurse, governess, or school-mistress, but the lessons are of the same kind.

Now, what is the provision made for the corresponding years of childhood in India? The course and routine of childhood is necessarily determined by the conditions of home-life; and the life of the Indian home is distracted at the present day by a tremendous unsettlement. There exists no uniformity in upbringing, no accepted standard, no common aim scientifically pursued. With few exceptions, the only children trained systematically in infancy and earlier childhood (apart from the scattered units who attend Christian missionary institutions in their earliest years) are those who are brought under the influence of certain reforming bodies of recent growth, which wisely seek to disseminate their propaganda through a social and religious training along national lines. Until recently there existed a very definite idea of home-education, more adapted, perhaps, to developing the qualities of reverence, dignity, patience, kindness— the time-honoured virtues of Indian culture-than to training individual powers, or imparting knowledge, other than the traditional lore of the ancient epics. But this tradition has become less and less operative as the home has come to be, within the last generation or so, increasingly out of sympathy with the aims and methods of scholastic training along Western lines, and with all the factors that determine success or prosperity in modern