, 1908-06-17

intellectual training and ideals, said this
disciple of Aristotle, will men come together.
Such was the impulse that led the far seeing
patriot to leave his immense fortune to found
the Rhodes scholarships, the last, the most
carefully planned, the sanest step toward the
attainment of that ideal.
But why was this plan, so broadly con-
ceived, restricted for its f%ulflment to Oxford
University? Could Oxford and Oxford alone
do what Rhodes wanted
Oxford University he selected, partly
for it's emiIence in scholarship, more for
its devotion to culture aud idealism. There
Newman's rich religious sentiment was
Graded. There the late VIM. Ewart Glad
stone, England's premier, moulded the life
which presented to the world a statesman of
farest type. There too, in that same pecu-
liar atmosphere, countless other Englishmen
have found their inspiration. AS the Duke
of Wellington. after winning the battle of
Waterloo, gave tue credit to the play
grounds "ot the great publ C school at Elton,
81 too, these sons of Oxford give credit to
the river, and the campus, the social fresides
and the recitation rooms of their Alma
Mater. This intellectual sympathy, this spj-
ritual alertness, Rhodes hoped to send from
Oxford through the world. Oxford, the
Oxford of the past, had many faults, as
NHANA NANN IN pow u
them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold
upon the modern world yet Oxonians of
to-day, brought up amidst the beauty and
sweetness of that beaut fal place, have never
failed to seize one truth, the truth that
beauty and sweetness plus o lofty ideal are
essential elements If o complete human
perfection. This in essence is the Rhodes
ideal.
It is as yet too early to point to positive
results from the Rhodes scholarships, never
theless, the future is rich in promise.
Surely the ideal which inspired the found
er is sane. Some may say that the
Rhodes scholars will be brought out of
thoughtful sympathy with their native
country but this objection is ~unpardonably
provincial. What is the history of the
making of modern Japan? Have not her
sons gone to the ends Of the world only to
carry home the fruits of their study and
investigation? Have our own countrymen
lost touch with America because of their
three years at Heidelberg? A thousand
times "No." Mankind is becoming more
and more one family. international s)ci-
cites are rapidly multiplying. Americans
are now travelling more than ever they did.
There is in the atmosphere Of today q spirit
of cooperation. Fraternal regard has
grown up between leading institutions of
learning. Interchange of professors is
breaking down the barrier of blind pre- jud-
ice, SO that hostilities between rival insti-
tutions are on the decline. The inter-uni-
versity exchange has at length yielded to
international exchange of professors, a svs-
tenn broadly conceived by Americans today
and endorsed emphatically by Yale. In all
this, we are but furthering the high pur-
pose of the international patriot, who gave
his fortune that young men might study at
Oxford, and SO cement by education an
amity betwt en- Germany, England and the
United States, the better to preserve the
integrity Of his nation and the better to
conserve the welfare Of humanity.
The Rhodes scholarships, then, should be
scorned neither by Germany nor America.
l was criminal, in 1905, for our own states,
Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas,
North and South Dakota, Montana and
Wyoming, to send over no Rhodes scholar.
How many struggling men have toiled in
vain for the pearl rejected by these culprit
states. Blindly occupied with the imme-
diate petty concerns of a limited horizon,
they failed to catch the broader glimpse of
nationality which the Rhodes scholarships
bespeak. l repeat, neither America, nor
Germany, nor any modern nation can afford
70 ranudiata tha IDEA Of Cecil John Rhodes.