“NEW FONTS FOR OLD”

To The Editor Of The Statesman
SIR, – As a member of the Cathedral congregation for close on 26 years, I am pleased to see that attention has been drawn to the unwarrantable ejection of the fine old Font which has been in use at the Cathedral for so many years, and I fully endorse “A.J. B’ss” remarks on the subject appearing in The Statesman of the 25th instant.

As it was evidently decided and agreed to by the Bishop and Cathedral Clergy that the memorial to the late Sir Herbert Carnduff should take the form of a Font (many other more suitable forms might have been chosen), laymen must presume that a second Font was deemed necessary, but why remove the existing one which has served generations and for which so many members of the congregation retain revered associations? As regards the parties responsible for this, the Cathedral vestry, whatever their views in the matter may have been, do not represent the congregation, inasmuch as the members are purely an advisory body.
F.G.C.
Calcutta.

MARRIED ASSISTANTS

To The Editor Of The Statesman
SIR, – When I first stepped into the ranks of the mercantile community some 6 or 7 years ago, one of the first things that struck me was the peculiar attitude taken up by firms as regards the question of marriage of their assistants. I do not refer to the junior men.

If an assistant married, it invariably happened that his future was affected and he was very often passed over for no other reason than he had a wife and family. We have now been at War nearly 4 years, and we find everywhere the new order of things replacing the old, but in India we still set our faces rigidly against anything new.

Thousands upon thousands of the young men of the nation have been killed off in this War, to say nothing of those who have been maimed. Is it not time that we took up this question seriously? There was, no doubt, very much to be said for the system of discouraging young men from marrying some years ago, but conditions have altered considerably within the last few years.
C.J.W.B.

ANGLO-INDIAN COLLEGE OR HOSTEL?

To The Editor Of The Statesman
SIR, – Every true friend of the Anglo-Indian community will feel thankful to Mr. A.B. Stokes for tearing to pieces another of the “terminological inexactitudes” indulged in at the recent Anglo-Indian gathering in Dalhousie by a not entirely unknown person, who ought, however, to have published his credentials before taking up his important role.

But I respectfully ask Mr. Stokes to publish his authority for the statement that the suggestion of the idea of a Hostel was adopted by the now notorious Simla conference as a bad second to the Anglo-Indian college.

It is possible that my devotion to the Anglo-Indian college idea, and my thorough distrust of the Hostel scheme, as a device for deluding our boys into laboring for worthless degrees in undesirable surroundings may have affected my memory of the resolutions of the Conference which, while favouring the college ideal, which was held to be too expensive, accepted the suggestion of a Normal College which should ultimately grow into a regular college.
W.C. MADGE.