OXFORD DAYS.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 64, 15 March 1924, Page 17

OXFORD DAYS.

!A COLONIAL'S IMPRESSIONS. FRAGRAHT SfEMORIES. • (By TREMLOC.) There is a blind idolatry of great men, great places, great institutions that one shrinks to impugn lest listeners should fail to realise the deep, warm, enduring love that springs from a searching esxs and an open mind—a love that hates cant, meaningless praise and would see weaknesses to mend them. Oxford is the victim sometimes of this idolatry; it Jis its great danger. Yet thrre is so much of worth under cover of the false that Oxford's sons —a worldwide kin — usually sit silent and pray that the light may be given to the idolators. j Oxford has no magic that ''whatever else it does, it will make you a gentleman." However you define a gon'. leman this is not true. There arc men at Oxford who cannot eat good food wifch- ! out undue eiigns of appreciation; there are men who scarcely know the meaning of sympathy for others Oxford does not simply turn on mc current and j transform any kind of raw material. A I very igrcal deal depend- on the man himself; he must give aa well a< receive, [resist at timea as well as adapt siimself. There is no other Oxford than this, no subtle entity outside the individual and flowing round him with beneficent tides. The moment you lose your individuality you kill Oxford iso far as you are concerned. I The great majority of sensible men— 'and they arc self-centred, who think iill of 'humanity—can scarcely fail to be the tetter for Oxford; a very few it spoils, perhaps, and they will probably work things out right in the end; some, 'of course, but fewer since the Avar, think that Oxford is themselves, and they 'gel little igood of it. So, as always, generalisations must be constantly Iqualificd. Oxford is varied as the world j itself, only more tolerant. The f rankled lover of Oxford will sing paeans I while he thinks of the whole of the glorious concourse of men, he will cry out against the idolators when he thinks of the men who spend their time clipping holes with niblicks in their landlord's carpet as they pot into the waste-paper basket; but for these last, too, he will have a warm heart, only sometimes they are mistaken for Oxford. A colonial born and bred .approaches Oxford with something of timidity. He fears English exclu=ivencfs and snobbery; he has no great amount of money for a hig;h social line: perliap, le will !be dreadfully lonely, almost an outcast. !l3y the end of a term I>U misgivings have I vanished, lie U very mud) at. home, 'instead • of- conservative prejudice, hi ,finds the greatest tolerance and geuerlosity of thought; many of the richer (Undergraduates have more than money; there is a great deal mingling of all Typos: there is reserve, of course, has with it, —it i.s mostly shyness—a verj igreat friendliness. the reaction from Idoubt produces rapture and a HUi? of jit; blindness. Time lirinis thingi int-j j proportion. Fluctuations of feeing I give place to a settled, seciiu; Live, 'fie ha* had difficulties to meet, glamours :,ati(i temptations to resist, an 1 out of it iall l>o probably co::us a man [with a calm and steady gaz» fir '"'"is. :lit- is strange if he i-. not mov; •rencrou's and tolerant. Mc has found that Knglisli peculiarities, though present, are sldn-deop; that there in probably more ! snobbery in colonial life; that all • Englishmen arc not Tories, and most of them are more liberal in mind than : colonials; yet he is not swept away into jworsSiip of" English life, with its glaring i (contrasts. Above all if he came with | i any exaggerated idea of his own merit, i !hn leaves Oxford with a great o >.n : on 1 !of other people, impressed with the amount of goodwill and ability in the j {world, and the number of people with i whom he can co-operate. ITs conceit is j igonc; but he probably has a new con fidenee in himself and a sense of responsibility for the work be can do in the 'world. " Few can leave Oxford without regret. It is softened by the knowledge that j j others are going too. and the old com- j ' panics being broken up. The memories j lof games and teas and talks, deep and j I light, will gild the years and wake to | vivid life in chance reunions. You will | talk of old fieorge, who very nearly | got his Rugger Blue. In college groups ' you will find him solemn and scowling, big and broad and clumsy, a man who his elderly tutor claims as his one friend of equal years. For, though young for an undergraduate, George had the settled ways of an old genttoI man, deep and slow of speech, lazy of I disposition. At first you hated him as ' the embodiment of your prejudiced eonI ception of the Englishman; slowly you ■ pierced through to the most simple, i hunest, and kindly of hearts. You iirst • glimpsed it in the paper hp read on his Tdol, the poet Wordsworth. Ton are I surprised to find he is not a Diehard j Tory, but a Liberal; that he has a ; ■ special admiration for colonials and has j been eager in a slow way for your | friendship. You part sadly, but knowing that you will both remember. I Sometimes your quiet talks or your I' silences with George—armchairs, smoke, fireside —have been Interrupted by the

tempestuous entry, of the turbulent Comrade A—, pursued by the boy Bill. They are both wild colts full of boyish s) i-i"ts. They ma;.- sit down after a while if you offer them something nice; or the hunt may leave its wreckage and go cluttering downstairs to other fripiidly rooms. A — has his serious side and owes his name to Communist. Socialist. Bolshevik views—anything is •iiwi or bad enoiipn to fasten r>ll to him. He is given to wild oratory on the most inappropriate occasions; lie lias a reputation to live up to and on the whole you do not take him very seriously; hu is a little, unstable. Bill is the dearest of boys—everyone likes I'm, both men and miiic'-i. A football ground h as irre&i-'tiliie u> him aa a public house to a drunkard. He i* docile, easily led. and a little irresponsible. You only hop? he will fall in with good people and you really have little anxiety because ho will overcome all with his delightful unconcerned boyishness. You could not fail to recall tho big, broad-Khouldered LondonHighlander, who turned all his "r'a" into "w's" and scattered dismay through two quads by leaving to play the pipes. He was the rising man at college, and yon know he will be n leader at all the dear friendly clubs where you foregathered and" drank coffee or beer, and read pleasant plays, or talked on religion and art and politics, and back from one to the other. Oxford is a great place for talk—a good deal of earnest nonsense, perhaps but it boils down into a knowledge of men tuid a tolerant und-traiuiiAn-' Much of it, too, is good for its own' f^ e Vr " 1S a busy life and eve n a full life where countless interests meet and find their proportions—an excellent school of manhood-