RHODES SCHOLARS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 9

RHODES SCHOLARS

AN AMERICAN’S PRAISE

NEW YORK, December 14. Dr. Frank Aydelotte, President of Swarthmore University, Pennsylvania, who is secretary of the Rhodes trustees in America, pays a high tribute to the Rhodes scholars, and refutes the impression that their usefulness, on their return from Oxford, is impaired by too much “foreign influence. . „ “As a group ,the American Rhodes scholars are still young men. says Dr. Aydelotte, "three-fourths ol them not having yet reached 40 years ot age. But, despite this fact, they number among them individuals who have reached national, and in some cases international eminence in occupations in which they are engaged. “The suggestion has- sometimes been made that the effect and the purpose of the Rhodes scholarship system is to denationalise or Anglicise the American scholars. Cecil Rhodes, in his will, specifically expressed the hope that no such result would follow, and nobody who knows the body ol returned Rhodes scholars, either in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, will have any doubt that they return as loyal and as patriotic citizens of their own country as they went.” , Dr. Aydelotte explained, in a statement issued on the eve of the selection of the Rhodes scholars by the States for 1928, that the main purpose of the Rhodes scholarships was to en-able-the brightest of the young generation to go to Oxford and to Europe, and to benefit by the best that can be obtained in that ancient home of learning and by association with students in other parts of the world, and then return to share with their own countrymen what they have learned, and to serve as channels of mutual understanding between the various Eng-lish-speaking countries. “There is no more fruitful agency for international peace than this interchange of students,” Dr. Aydelotte said. “The fact that the Rhodes scholarships have found so many imitators in later days, so that there is now a complete two-way system in operation, shows how enlightened was the founder of the Rhodes scholaiships when he .drew up his famous will.” *