HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 1, 1 July 1922, Page 16

HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN

SPEECH BY MR. ASQUITH

Speaking in support of "an appeal on behalf of Queen's College, Harley-street, Mr. Asquith said that as chairman of the Universities Commission nothing had impressed him. more painfully than the pecuniary straits to which the •women's colleges, ©specially of Oxford, had been driven. The State could be .legitimately called upon to give some help, because' any euch expenditure on ihe part of the State was reproductive. But in these days of oppressive taxation and of overwhelming debt, it was idle to look to the State to fill the gap. The greatest need of higher education in England was the active revival of the spirit which animated the founders of our great colleges in medieval times, and of which, in these later days, we had seen such a splendid illustration in the munificence of the/rich men of the United States of America. The , pious, benefactors of the Middle Ages were by no means all wealthy people. Some were ambitious to perpetuate the memory of their name, but in the main, they were inspired by a strong and reasonable sense of religious and social duty. When, one saw the scale and the purposes for which money, both public and private, wae 'lavished in these days, while good and ■great causes, essential to, our national life and future, were allowed to pine and starve, one became at moments tempted to join the sombre following of the Dean of St. Paul's. (Laughter.) The appeal issued a year ago for pecuniary support for the women's colleges at Oxford had so far met with a miserable response. He hoped Queen's would be more fortunate in its modest demand for £20,000. Quite seriously hi his judgment the growing disproportion between the good purposes to which wealth might be devoted, and the frivolous, worthless transitory, and unproductive purposes to which it was in fact devoted, was one of the tragedies 'of our igodern English life. Remarking that the participation of women upon even terms in the opportunities of life was now an established fact, he recalled that one of the great states-men-orators of Ancient Rome had occasion to make a speech in support of an appeal for the encouragement of mar-, riage, an institution which was rather waning_ in those days of the Roman [Republic. This orator said : "Since providence has so ordained that we cannot live comfortably with" women, or at all without them, let us make.the best jof the situation, and, if need be, eacrij fiee our immediate felicity to the perI manent interests of posterity and the .State." (Laughter.) • We wore very much in that situation b>day, and h« thought that well-advißed citizens with some surplus which they could devote to other than selfish .purposes could not expend it. more usefully than in the development of the higher education of women. (Cheers.) The sum asked for was not as a solatium, to soothe the debility of dotage, but to appease and give satisfaction to ths growing pains of a second youth. Queen's College was founded in 1848, the year in which Tennyson's "Princess" was published. That year was, a year of revolution all over Europe, which left little, perhaps no permanent, results. But it was in that year that there in Harley'street the first expression was given to the great movement for the better education of women. They could now go about the streets of Oxford, as he often did in term time, and see at every corner girl undergraduates, and' it was not too,hazardous a prediction that perhaps slowly, and gradually, perhaps in the lifetime of another generation, they would witness a similar spectacle in the less progressive environment of Cambridge. (Laughter.) 'In a 'rationally conducted modern State there'was no such thine as a cast-iron system of eduication. While there was no proper place in it for, fads and crotchets, there ought to be the widest possible liberty for experiment. A present need existed for making up the deplorable leeway in the higher education of women.

THE WRONG-;WINDOWS. Lady Tree, once a student at Queen's College, recalled how'she used to walk as a schoolgirl from her home near the Brompton ■ Oratory to : the college in Hariey-street. Inside the school the lecturers were her" herpes; outside her idol was Henry Irving, who could alone lure her: from her college work. One day she learned that Irving lived ,in roome of a trunk shop, between Graftonistreet and Bond-street. Thenceforward her route was changed, and every day for two years she increased her walk to 'school by three miles, in the vain hope that she should see his face at the ■window, his "hansom" at the door, or even a glimpse of his beautiful hand drawing up the blind. It never haipened. Long years after, when she. met ■her erstwhile: idol face to face, p.nd satj next him at dinner at Lady Bn^dett Contts's, she unfolded the story of fcer "daily detour of devotion" and (he unfulfilled hopes -she entertained. lie. listened to her story rather moved, sh» thought, and then observed : . "Very-nice,-very pretty; . But they were not my windows." (Loud laughter.)