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174 ness must be laid in a strong and advanced system of national education. He had a political ideal, no doubt; but politics meant to him much more than is ordinarily understood by the term. It was not a game of expediency, but a “ school of human character ” which acted and reacted on the life of the nation. “ Education could no more be divorced from politics/’ in his opinion, “ than it could be divorced from religion and morals. Any system of education that helps such isolation and division between the various organic relations of life is mediaeval and not modern.”

The monied leaders of the National Council of Education movement, however, could not accept Arabinda’s principles. “ They were not free from the fear of possible official opposition, which, if once aroused, would make their work, they thought, absolutely impossible. They had a real dread of the bureaucracy ” whom they were not prepared to defy. Experience has shown that they were quite mistaken if they thought they could develop their scheme of education without rousing the fears and the bitterest opposition of the bureaucracy, even after declaring the non-political character of their scheme. Never before in the history of the human race was it so well realised as now that the school is the nursery of the man and the citizen. Lord Curzon realised it in full and it was his aim to curtail or, if possible, crush the nationalist influences in the