LIFE AT OXFORD

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 14 June 1924, Page 7

LIFE AT OXFORD

AN AMERICAN MISFIT

"PRISON FOR BODY AND SOUL"

SPEECH BY RHODES SCHOLAR.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

(SYDNEY SUN CABLE.) (Received 14th June, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, 13th June.

At a recent meeting of the Rhodes Scholars Trust, Mr. Kudyard Kipling delivered a speech dealing with the aims of the founder for drawing men of different countries into touch. A considerable discussion has now arisen over a speech delivered at Oxford by Mr. Green, an American Rhodes scholar, in reply to Air. Kipling, in which it was disclosed that American scholars are not responsive to the late Cecil Khodes's ideals. He declared that Oxford had not been elysium. "It has only brought death to ou'j dreams of romance and hopes. Its grey, unbeautiful buildings are merely old-fashioned, and often prisons for soul and body. If Cecil Rhodes, in founding the scholarships, meant us to become* apostles of the creed for which Mr. Kipling has laboured so long, we must deny his hopes. Oxford, England, and Europe only makes the American Rhodes scholars love America more, and become more American daily. We are sick of handshaking across the seas. We go home without regret and eagerly, to the nation we know and understand, hoping that some of us will amount to something, if Oxford's life of idleness has not impaired our energies."