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14 CHINA MISSION YKA& BOOK.from all restraint at an age and under conditions requiring very different treatment.The Shansi Provincial College, under the care ofDr. Timothy Richard, stands in a class by itself, but atthe impending expiration of the ten-year period no onecan predict under what influences it may fall. Exceptional likewise is the Tientsin University, founded by Dr.Tenney, which has a large foreign staff. The ProvincialCollege at Paotingfu has been for more than a yearand a half under the presidency of Mr. Fei Ch i-hao, aChristian graduate of Oberlin and of Yale. Dr. Ferguson, of Shanghai, has well pointed out one of the fatalweaknesses of government institutions in China in theirdivided control. Every school is in the hands of foursets of managers the Board of Education, which may:include the central board and a local board, the directorsof the special school, the faculty, and the students.The latter by playing off against one or both of theother two, are in almost every case able to decide thepolicy of the school, and are almost always able toprocure the dismissal of a teacher, foreign or native, towhom they may have taken a dislike. Such schoolsmay hardly be said to pursue an enlightened andcontinuous policy for two consecutive years." Compulsory education which the government has announced asa policy for both boys and girls, remains, and seemslikely long to remain an unmeaning phrase.In the Chihli province, where education is held tobe most advanced, primary schools seem outside of largecentres to be either altogether non-existent, or elsesimply of the old type, but with less coherency and witha laxer discipline. Like all other Boards the Board ofEducation issues with intermittent sequence a bewildering number of "Regulations;" among them someprescribing modest and inexpensive dress for girls and(so it is reported) unbound feet. The anti-foot-bindingenterprise, which seems stationary, is probably quietlymaking some headway, and although the aggregate