to have influenced his decision as much as the chance to create a completely new type of school in India. Foot's first action upon being offered the position was to recruit J.A.K. (John) Martyn from Harrow School as his deputy. Although Martyn had not visited India before, he took up the offer because of the opportunity it afforded him to implement the ideas of German educator Kurt Hahn at Doon; it was something he had not been able to do at Harrow. Doon's ethos and guiding principles were determined early in its life by Foot, Martyn, R.L. Holdsworth and Jack Gibson, who went on to become principal of Mayo College, and Martyn acknowledged the influence of Hahn's ideas in the development of the school's ethos. They were soon joined in their efforts by Indians such as the artist Sudhir Khastgir (the school's first art teacher, who had trained previously in Santiniketan) and Gurdial Singh, a noted mountaineer who taught at Doon for several decades. In an essay entitled The Objects of Education published in the school magazine, Foot offered a template for a complete education for boys, which included teaching them to form a habit of choosing good over evil, think logically, express their thoughts and views clearly, and maintain a healthy body. At the opening of the school, he said, "Our boys should leave The Doon School as members of an aristocracy, but it must be an aristocracy of service inspired by the ideals of unselfishness, not one of privilege, wealth or position". The annual school fees in 1935 was 1,375, and by September 1946, it had risen to 1,800. The per-capita income of India, then largely an agricultural society, in 1947 has been recorded as 252. In 1947, there were around 300 boys studying at Doon, out of which 50-60 were Muslims, 15-20 Sikhs, 15-20 Parsees, 6-7 Christians, and the remaining two-thirds Hindu. The first cohort of students left school in 1938, and during the Second World War, about 65 Doon students served in the Army, Navy or Air Force. In 1948, Foot returned to England for "family reasons", and John Martyn became the second headmaster. After the Indian Independence, Martyn's friends suggested it would be a mistake to stay on in India, but he later wrote: "They could not have been more wrong. I have found my life much pleasanter than before...although no one had previously ever