Professor Blunt

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20988, 17 October 1933, Page 8

Professor Blunt

On Saturday evening the staff and governors of Canterbury College said farewell to Professor T. G. R. Blunt, who has retired this year after holding the chair of modern languages fpr 32 years. By his going the college suffers a loss which is not easily defined or estimated. The number of his students who now hold high positions in schools and universities throughout the Empire is some measure of the excellence of his teaching. But his most valuable service has been his influence on the minds and manners of the many hundreds of students who have sat under him. Because Canterbury College is small as universities go and because it has little weight of tradition behind it, those w.ho have held chairs there have played a powerful part in the development of what can be called, for want of a better expression, its corporate personality. Professor Blunt's clearly-defined attitude to life, and his long term of service, have made his inlluence narticularly strong. And it is an influence for which Canterbury College can feel grateful. Professor Blunt stood for a tradition in education as fine as any in the world; and he has woven much of that tradition into the life of Canterbury College. It is a life's work that in retrospect should give him nothing but satisfaction. His friends in New Zealand—and they are numbered in hundreds—will feel his departure as a deep personal loss.