around £300 a year. The governorship of a British province was the highest post an ICS officer could aspire to. The governors at the top of the pyramid got £6,000 a year plus allowances. All ICS officers retired on the same pension of £1,000. This sum was paid as an annuity each year after retirement. Widows of deceased officers were entitled to £300 a year, leading to a popular saying that an ICS marriage was worth "three hundred a year alive or dead". In the first decades of the twentieth century, the imbalance in salaries and emoluments was so great that 8,000 British officers earned £13,930,554, while 130,000 Indians in government service (not just those in the Indian Civil Service proper) were collectively paid a total of £3,284,163. ICS officers normally served for a minimum of twenty five years, and there was a maximum service period of thirty five years. ICS officers served as political officers in the Indian Political Department and also were given fifty percent of the judgeships in the state high court (the rest were generally elevated from the high court bar). The tenure of ICS officers serving as judges of the high court and Supreme Court was determined by the retirement age fixed for judges. Source: Central Government Secretary to Government of India Joint Secretary to Government of India Deputy Secretary Additional Deputy Secretary Under Secretary Assistant Secretary to Government of India Courts Judge of State High Court District Judge State Government Chief Secretary (British Empire) Secretary to State Government Divisional Commissioner Deputy Commissioner / District Collector Assistant Commissioner Changes after 1912 With the passing of the Government of India Act 1919, the Imperial Services headed by the Secretary of State for India, were split into two – All India Services and Central Services. Before the First World War, 95% of ICS officers were Europeans; after the war, the British government faced growing difficulties in recruiting British candidates to the service. With fewer young British men interested in joining, mainly due to the decreased levels of compensation compared to other careers, and confronted with numerous vacancies, the government resorted to direct appointments; between 1915 and 1924, 80% of new British ICS appointees entered the service in this way. During the same period, 44% of new appointments to the ICS were filled by Indians. In 1922, Indian candidates were permitted to sit for the ICS examinations in