Page:The empire and the century.djvu/746

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THE MASTER'S DUTIES
703

have access to libraries, and clubs, and common rooms, and will be able to live a corporate college life, in which they will be under discipline, and in which their parents will have reasonable assurance that their sons are not going morally, mentally, and physically to the bad. In the social life of the college the English members of the staff will be expected to take a prominent part. The principal administrative officers of the hostels will be Englishmen—that is to say, they will do work similar to that of a house-master at a public school or a tutor at college. They will. take part in athletic games, and join the literary and social clubs which will inevitably sprint up where a number of young men are collected together. Thus it is hoped that in each college will grow up a distinctive 'tone' or set of opinions which will in time constitute its traditions, and which will mould and impress each succeeding generation that comes under its influence.

Now, whatever else may be said of this policy, it has one superlative merit: it is the application of a conception of education which Englishmen thoroughly understand, and which, therefore, they are likely to execute well. In the association of masters and boys, in their influence upon character, and in the creation of a healthy and manly tone among the boys, lies the distinctive and almost solitary merit of our historic public schools, and the same educational tradition is carried on in the Universities, where the junior Dons undeniably import an element of thoughtfulness into undergraduate life. This is the best characteristic of English education, and Englishmen would know how to transplant it to India. An Englishman transferred from Oxford or Cambridge to a residential college in India would know at once what part he was expected to take in the life of the boarding-house or hostel, and he would know how to set about it He would reproduce in India those parts of his own experience at Harrow and Cambridge, or Rugby and Oxford, which had most influenced and impressed him, and,