Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/433

 as we tfo over English, and like us they too on comple- tion of their education loose their energy and for the most part become imitators. Originality leaves them along with the mother-tongue. We the English- educated class are unfit to ascertain the true measure of the harm done by the unnatural system. We should get some idea of it if we realised ho\f little we hava reacted upon the masses. The outspoken views on education that our parents sometimes give vent to are thought-compelling. We dote upon our Bostes and I^oys. Had our people been educated through their vernaculars duwng the last fifty years, I am sure that the presence in our midst of d Bose or a Roy would not have filled us with astonishment.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of propriety or otherwise of the direction that Japanese energy has taken, Japanese enterprise must amaze us. The national awakening there has taken place through their national language, and so there is a fresh- ness about every activity qf theirs. They are teaching their teachers. They have falsified the blotting-sheet smile. Education has stimulated national life, and the world watches dumbstruck Japan's activities. The harm done to national life by the medium being a foreign tongue is immeasurable.

The correspondence that should exist between the school training and the character imbibed with the mo- ther's milk and the 'training received through her sweet speech is absent when the school training is given through a foreign tongue. However pure may be his motives, he who thus snaps the cord that should bind the school-life and the home-life is an enemy of the nation. We are traitors to our mothers by remaining

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