THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 249, 18 October 1904, Page 4

THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.

: We here received a communication from the "Rhodes Scholarship Trustees, Ito which we have been asked to call I public attention. The Trustees have dejcided that the selection of a scholar for Xetv Zealand must be completed next jcar by the end of February, 1905. It appears that some difficulty has arisen year through the delay in getting; reports from the selection committees jin the various colonies. Many of the j Oxford colleges, we are informed, close their lists for October—when the Rhodes Scholars must be in residence —before the end of the summer term in June. In order to give Scholars an opportunity of exercising their right of preference for any particular college, it is therefore necessary that the names of the Scholars should reach the Oxford Representative of the Trustees early in the summer term, and the end of February has thus been fixed as the extreme limit for selection. Intending candidates and the governing bodies of colleges and other 'institutions interested in the matter will jdo well to note the decision reached on j this point by the Trustees. On several previous occasions we have dwelt upon the importance of these scholarships, and the value of the opportunity they afiord by opening a career for the best intellectual products of the colonies. Because of their importance it seems to us highly necessary that there should be no room for doubt or uncertainty left in the minds of the public as to the conditions' under which they must be obtained or held. We mention this perhaps obvious fact because we believe that a certain amount of misunderstanding arose over the scholarship regulations last year. It wa3 uot absolutely clear at the time when entries were received, either that Greek would be regarded as a compulsory subject for Rhodes Scholars au Oxford, or that the Selection Committee in NtW Zealand would insist upon a knowledge of Greek as an indispensable qualification. This point certainly needs dealing up, for it has been stated, on what appears to be good authority. that the Rhodes Scholar elected last year was chosen in spite of the fact that he hen. no certificate of competsney in Greek. I' would be palpably unfair to all eligible candidates to ignore such a restriction, after a certain subject has been specified as an essential qualification, and we hope that those chiefly concerned will make it their business to discover precisely what the opinions and intentions of the Selection Committee may be on the question of compulsory Greek.