The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-11-17

there are twelve, are fastened on the outside by ponderous iron coverings like doors, while in addition iron bars set close together and heavy wire screens give added tection.-Wash- ington Special to the Chicago Tribune. RHODES AMERICAN PLAsTERS.
 Cecil Rhodes never ceased to look into the future. In all his life no wo- man or man and institution was all lowed to stand between him and a clear view of his purpose. And when he established the scholarships at OK ford for American young men. it is cer- tain that his half-eynieal and coldly prophetic soul flung out this eagerly accepted largesse in the sure knowl- edge that those who picked it up would fulfil in some measure an ambition se- cret with himself.
 The American young men are now at Oxford, and the periodicals are get ting full of descriptions and eulogies of what these curious ones from the new world are learning in the ancient, re spectacle and formal institution from which Cecil Rhodes went forth many years ago to twist an empire out of Af- rioa as an Egyptian twisted mud and straw into bricks. But from one side and another comes the question which 1 the Argonaut asked long ago: VIII the American student become an Oxonian, or will Oxford become yivified. as we are fond of putting it, by fresh and Yankee ideas?
 Tn the first place, Oxford is not a place of any but formal learning. Sci- ence and art and social history find new opponents among the dWellers m li its cloisters, and fine as the life there is, 1t Is British, insular, typically pro { duct of one race divided from all other races by a sea. The Californian and the man from Illinois may learn little culture, he may drop a few of his man nerisms and find a little more pleasure in the softer pursuits, but 1t may well i be doubted if he will profit to the ex- ltent of a fuller knowledge of tho condi- tions of his own life in America, or of the necessities of his own national ideals. Oxford is wholly and pre-emi- nently d school for Englishmen. The alien is an alien, and will be and must | A But just as good people frequently get French nurse for their children in the hope that the said infant may ab- sorb d little of the French tongue, So Cecil Rhodes thought it cheap to teach a nation made up largely of colonies a ] few things about colonists by introduc- ] ing to it in pleasant guise the very hot I test of Americans, young men full of Yankee notions, of Yankee warmth and 1 Yankee reasoning. The greatest colo mist of the British empire, the man who
 joked coldly with kings, did. his last
 colonization in his last will and testa- ment. In the very center of English
 life he planted colony of Americans.
 He did it nicely, without flourish of his
 banners, without awakening any suspi- eion But 1t may be fancied easily that his austere soul looks down on Oxford
 huniming drowsiiy with the sounds of
 It's formal and facile existence, and smiles, seeing among it's sons the sons of England's great colony from across seas, teaching the Englishmen a few I things about English blood transfused. Cecil Rhodes cared nothing about the American. He knew something of
 what was needed in English training,
 however, and he applied the American
 as one applies plaster to weak l member. But there are multitude
 who think 1t Is going to do the plaster 1 endless good. The ancient cured cer-
 tain diseases by opening the breast of
 a live dog and placing the beating
 heart on the seat of the affection. But there is no record that this treatment was good for the dog, whose votal or gans had to perform their functions in foreign surroundings San Francisco
 Argonaut.