Alluding in 1909 to "the lamentable events of the last 12 months," he maintained, "without hesitation," that "the most strenuous efforts must be unfalteringly made by all persons truly interested in the future of the rising generation to protect our youths from the hands of irresponsible people who recklessly seek to seduce our students from the path of academic life and to plant in their immature minds the poisonous seeds of hatred against constituted Government." This year he was even more outspoken, and laid it down that even the teacher "who scrupulously abstains from political matters within his class-room, but at the same time devotes much or all of his leisure hours to political activities and agitation, and whose name and speeches are prominently before the world in connexion with political organizations and functions," fails in his duty towards his pupils; for "their minds will inevitably be attracted towards political affairs and political agitation if they evidently constitute the main life-interest and life-work of one who stands towards them in a position of authority." Teachers should therefore avoid everything that tends "to impart to the minds of our boys a premature bias towards politics." A most admirable exhortation; but I had an opportunity of estimating the weight that it carried with some of the political leaders of Bengal when I accepted an invitation from Mr.Surendranath Banerjee to meet a few Bengalee students in an informal way and have a talk with them.

They were bright, pleasant lads, and, if they had been left to themselves, I might have had an interesting talk with them about their studies and their prospects in life, but Mr.Banerjee and several other politicians who were present insisted upon giving to the conversation a political turn of a disagreeably controversial character which seemed to me entirely out of place.
The mischievous incitements of politicians would not, however, have fallen on to such receptive soil if economic conditions, for which we are ourselves at least partly responsible, had not helped to create an atmosphere in which political disaffection is easily bred amongst both teachers and taught.

The rapid rise in the cost of living has affected no class more injuriously than the old clerkly castes from which the teaching staff and the scholars of our schools and colleges are mainly recruited.

Their material position now often compares unfavourably with that of the skilled workman and even of the daily labourer, whose higher wages have generally kept pace with the appreciation of the necessaries of life.

This is a cause of great bitterness even amongst those who at the end of their protracted, course of studies get some small billet for their pains.