In every country the crowd of expectants far outnumbers the places available.

If, indeed, the Government which introduced Western education into Bengal had been native instead of foreign, it would have found itself entangled in difficulties no less grave than those which now confront the British rulers; and there can be little doubt that it would probably have broken down under them.
The phases through which the State's educational policy in India have passed during the last fifty years are explained at length in this volume.

The Government was misled in the wrong direction by the reports of two Commissions between 1880 and 1890, whose mistakes were discerned at the time by those who had some tincture of political prudence.

The problem is now to reconstruct on a better plan, to try different lines of advance.

But some of us have heard of an enterprising pioneer in a difficult country, who confidently urged travellers to take a new route by assuring them that it avoided the hills on the old road.