THE RHODes bequeST AND UNIVERSITY FEDERATION

'IF the Colonies are not, in the old phrase, possessions of England, then they must be part of England; and we must adopt this view in earnest. We must cease altogether to say that England is an island off the north-western coast of Europe, that it has an area of 120,000 square miles and a population of thirty odd millions. We must cease to think that emigrants, when they go to colonies, leave England or are lost to England. We must cease to think that the history of England is the history of the Parliament that sits at Westminster, and that affairs which are not discussed there cannot belong to English history. When we have accustomed ourselves to contemplate the whole Empire together and call it all England, we shall see that here, too, is a United States; here, too, is a great homogeneous people-one in blood, language, religion, and laws, but dispersed over a boundless space.' So wrote the late Sir John Seeley in a little book which well deserves to be in the hands of everyone who has at heart one of the most important problems of our time.

In the Rhodes bequest to the University of Oxford, and in the institution of an Imperial Council of Universities, the result of the Allied Colonial Universities Conference held in London last year, we have the foundations, broad and solid, of an alliance and relationship between ourselves and the Colonies unparalleled alike both in their significance and in their potentialities. The significance of the first lies in the fact that one of the most practical and sagacious men of our times discerned clearly that as many as possible of the rising generation in our Colonies could and should be educated as British citizens, should be sentimentally and morally impressed by the traditions and discipline of our university system, and, in his own words, should have instilled into their minds the advantage to the Colonies as well as to the United Kingdom of the retention of the unity of the Empire.' The significance of the second lies in the fact that in every one of our Colonies, hitherto, and very naturally, absorbed in the mercantile development of their material resources and in the practical work of politics and legislation, a growing sense of the importance of higher

education and culture, and of a close and intimate relationship, for the purpose of furthering it, with the great centres of that education and culture in the Mother Country, is finding emphatic expression. It is in the sense of the existence of such needs as these, and in the instinct which turns to the Mother Country to supply them, that we may discern with confidence an earnest and anticipation of closer bonds; for it is the creation of a new tie. The old ties-common blood, a common language, common laws, and a common religionthough strong, in Burke's phrase, as links of iron, did not, as we all know, prove indissoluble. Of the new tie it may be said, without reserve and without exaggeration, that, potent in itself, it adds to the potency of every other tie.

So much for the significance of these movements and institutions. What may reasonably be expected from them, their potentialities, so to speak, will be best seen by giving a brief sketch of what their chief initiator provided. By the Rhodes bequest 162 scholarships, each of the annual value of 300l.,tenable for three years, are thus distributed:

Such are his provisions for the Colonies, but for the purpose of— encouraging and fostering an appreciation of the advantages which [he implicitly believed] will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world, and to encourage, in the students of the United States of North America who will benefit from the American scholarships, an attachment to the country from which they have sprung, without withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth—

he provided two scholarships, each of the annual value of 3001, tenable for three consecutive years, at any college in the University of Oxford, to each of the following States:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

The conditions imposed on candidates for the scholarships, who are nominated either by committees of selection or by university councils, are that they must be British citizens (in the case of the American scholarships American citizens), must be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, and must be unmarried; and, that they may be competent to proceed at once to the more advanced courses of study at Oxford, they must at least have reached the end of their sophomore or second year work at some recognised degree-granting university or college, and must have qualified themselves for selection by passing an examination corresponding to Responsions. The first Rhodes scholars have in this autumn term come into residence, and a link for ever between Oxford and every centre of the English-speaking race-Colonial and extra-Colonial-has thus been

formed.

Almost contemporary with the announcement of the Rhodes bequest the Allied Colonial Universities Conference met in London, ' with two aims '-to quote the words of its Chairman-'to develop the intellectual and moral forces of all the branches of our race wherever they dwell, and therewith also to promote learning, science, and the arts by and through which science is applied to the purposes of life'; and, secondly, to strengthen the unity of the British people dispersed throughout the world,' under the conviction that the deepest and most permanent source of unity is to be found in those elements in which the essence of national life dwells, identity of thought and feeling, a like attachment to those glorious traditions which link us to the past, a like devotion to those ideals which we have to pursue in the future.' In the constitution of this conference, in the speeches of the delegates representing each university or college, in the attitude assumed by the representatives of our two great

universities and of the other universities, central and provincial, in Great Britain and Ireland, and in the resolutions passed as the result of the conference we have in epitome the whole history of this movement, as well as a precise account both of what has been effected and of what is about to be effected in its present stage of develop

ment.

The institutions of university rank' which have been established in our Colonial dominions, and which now, without exception, desire federative union with the universities of Great Britain-in other words, a Central Imperial Academic Council, equality of privileges, the interchange of students and teachers, and mutual assistance in the furtherance of post-graduate studies and original research— number, not counting affiliated institutions, about twenty.

Now, there can be nothing offensive and surely nothing unreasonable if we assume that in such a federation there must and should be a hegemony, and that that hegemony belongs to Oxford and Cambridge. It belongs to Oxford and Cambridge because they have a threefold claim to it-an intellectual, a moral, a sentimental. The paramount-the ubiquitous-the all-absorbing energy of science and its votaries must not blind us to the fact that universities, regarded in relation to their essential and peculiar functions, are not primarily centres of scientific instruction. They are the centres of the humanities in the most comprehensive sense of the term, the centres of all that is influential in the study of theology and metaphysics, of moral and political philosophy, of logic, of history, of belles-lettres generally, and of the fine arts. These are their primary functions. It is absurd, it is monstrous, to suppose that science can supply, either as a means of intellectual and moral discipline, or as an end equivalent in importance, what these subjects supply. And this is certain unless the two universities recognise and guard loyally and jealously their peculiar prerogative the consequences cannot fail to be most disastrous. In studies like the humanities, which appeal so directly to the finer instincts and affections, into which sentiment enters so largely, and which owe so much to association and surroundings, it is of immense advantage, of quite uncommon and capital importance, that in any imperial system they should find their centres where for so many ages they have found them-at Oxford and Cambridge. Science creates its own atmosphere, and its own home, and is quite independent of 'towers whispering the last enchantments of the Middle Ages,' or whispering anything else, and, indeed, quite indifferent to them. It certainly gains nothing by selecting the banks of the Isis and of the Cam for centres, and would as certainly lose nothing if it established its chief seminaries on the slag plains of Wolverhampton and the Black Country. In any case, if Oxford and Cambridge are to exercise hegemony in any system of imperial university federation, they will not hold it by virtue of what they have in common with

the universities of McGill, Toronto, and Sydney abroad, and with the universities of London, Leeds, and Manchester at home. Nor is this all. Oxford and Cambridge would themselves be the first to repudiate any claim to pre-eminency-we may perhaps go further and say any claim to particular authority in science either as legislators or as exponents. Their sole clairn, I repeat, to that position which Englishmen, at all events, would wish to see them fill, and which they are fairly entitled to fill in such a system, is based on their relation to the humanities. And here they have a great work to do. Briefly indicated, it is to further and secure such solidarity in all that pertains to the moral, aesthetic, and political education of the citizens of Greater Britain as has been attained in the organisation of scientific instruction. Science may, both as a subject of common interest and as a means of mutual advantage, do much, and very much, to strengthen the ties between ourselves and the Colonies, but the humanities will, as Cecil Rhodes foresaw, do very much more.

And now, before considering the relations which it is proposed to establish, let us see what connection already exists between our chief universities and the universities of the Colonies. With Oxford are affiliated the universities of McGill (Montreal), Toronto, Tasmania, New Brunswick, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, New Zealand, Cape of Good Hope; and, in India, Calcutta, the Punjab, Bombay, Madras, and Allahabad. And affiliation confers these privileges. For admittance to a B.A. degree at Oxford a student is obliged to pass three examinations-Responsions, what is called the first public examination (Moderations), and the second public examination, after keeping residence for three academical years, each consisting of three full terms of eight weeks-that is, twelve academical terms. Now if a student belonging to any of these affiliated universities has pursued at his own university a course of study extending over two years, passing all the examinations incident to it, he is exempt from Responsions, and, if he takes honours at Oxford, he is allowed to obtain his degree after keeping eight instead of twelve terms, but, if only a pass, he must complete the full period of residence. But greater privileges are conceded to students of these affiliated universities who have pursued at their own university a course extending over three years, and who have at the end of that course obtained final honours, for they are exempt not only from Responsions but from the first public examination, and, provided they take honours in the final examination at Oxford, they may obtain the B.A. degree after keeping only eight terms-in other words, after two years' residence. By a very wise regulation, which, however, does not, for some reason, apply to Indian students, every Colonial student is obliged to qualify in Greek. In the provisions made for the promotion of post-graduate study and research, for the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Letters and of Science, we have another and important point of contact with the