UNIVERSITY LIFE.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12897, 31 August 1907, Page 10

UNIVERSITY LIFE.

SPEECH BY THE BISHOP OF AUCKLAND.

(special to "thr pbess.") AUCKLAND, August 30. A committee of business and professional men was set up to-day at a meeting of citizens held to consider a scheme for enlarging St. John's C.Vlege, put forward by the Bishop oi Auckland. Tho scheme in its entirety will probably involve an expenditure of £40,000 or £50,000, but at present it is only proposed to add a wing at a cost of £6000, of which over £1000 has already been promised. The scheme, said his Lordship, was a big dream, but tho man who did not dream big dreams was not tit to bo a leader. The dream involved the probability that, within fifty or eighty years, there would bo a University of Auckland, besides a University of New Zealand. When that day came, if tho dream proved to bo true, Auckland would already have a first-class residential Collcgo for University students. "This," | the Bishop went on to say, "is a national question, and not for the diocese of Auckland only. Wo want to give to our young New Zealanders what tho older universities can give' to tho young men of these countries. We aro maturing the history of New Zealand to-day, and St. John's ought to do for New Zealand what Trinity College, Toronto, md Lennonfiold have done for Canada, and what Oxford and Cambridge have done, and aro doing, for tho Empire." > Tlie undergraduates were crying out in every centre of Now Zealand because of the lack of social life, because of loneliness and isolation. He thought it was largely because tho social lifo was outside the universities at present, that tho damnable thing that sport moans getting money, had got into New Zealand. If they were ablo to bring young men together in friendship, and administer to the esprit do corps, tho game would bo played as it should bo played, and sport would bo kept pure, instead of it being a moneygrabbing business. He had been toid by business men more than one© that they found it difficult to get young mon of accurate principles with a true conception of the law of service. In older countries, when big manufacturers or merchants wanted a man to superintend a department, they went to the universities. It would be found throughout tho world that men who were at the head of many of the greatest commercial undertakings wero distinguished graduates of a university, and it was not because the university gave a man a B.A. or M.A. degree, but because of the thing such degrees represented. It was worth something money could not buy, and only experience could give; it was that tho man who had passed through the social lifo of a university who was able to express his personality. Ho learnt what individuality meant in contradistinction to individualism. Success in life largely depended on the power and ability to understand other men; henco the merit of the residential college system. A student had to be social, and make allowances for differences of temperament, realising other personalities through the realisation of his own.