The completed buildings of the Indian Institute at Oxford were
opened on Wednesday by Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India. He was not, he declared, a hero- worshipper, but if there was any body of men to whom he would willingly take off his hat as benefactors of humanity it was the Indian Civil Service. Lord George, in the course of his speech, told an interesting story of Sir George Clerk, an old Indian ruler, who declared that what India wanted was the abolition of the telegraph-wires, not only running home but inside India. He explained this by saying that when be went out to India he was sent up the country with nothing but a knowledge of the vernacular. He had to keep his dis- trict quiet and govern by his own resources, and the only way he accomplished that task was by making friends of the notables of the district, and governing to a large extent through them and by their opinions. Sir George went on to say "In our days you send out young men, and they go out to a district with a code under one arm and a telegraph-wire under the other. They have to enforce their code, and if they cannot all they have to do is to telegraph for somebody to help them to do so. That is not the way to make good administrators." That is a striking story, and contains a lesson for all bureaucracies.
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