The Hawera Star. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1925. RHODES SCHOLARS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 25 November 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1925. RHODES SCHOLARS.

Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normacby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Alton, Hurley ville, Patep, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakaraara, Obangai, Meremere, Fraser Road, aDd Ararata.

In the closing days of November each year there comes to at least one young New Zealander the highest distinction that the University of his country can bestow upon him. . This year the honour has been doubly measured, and yesterday two students of Canterbury College were elected Rhodes Scholars. The fact that one of the two is a Taranaki resident, and an old boy of the New Plymouth Boys’ High School, brings the award nearer home and increases it--interest for this province, the whole of which will join in congratulating Mr. Barak upon his splendid success. The story of Cecil Rhodes, the English boy who went out to the diamond mines of Africa, who returned home every winter until his course at Oxford was completed, who won a fortune in his adopted country, who dreamed a great vision of the leavening power of his famous and beloved Alma Mater, who founded a Scholarship Trust to carry that vision into effect, and who now sleeps beneath a simple stone slab on the crest, of the hills he loved so well —-that story needs no telling here, although it is one which might fairly have, a more prominent place in the schoolbooks. A Rhodes Scholar, in accordance with the wish of the founder, is elected having regard to (1) his literary and scholastic .attainments; (2) his fondness for and success in manly outdoor sports; (3) his qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;, and (4) his exhibition during schooldays of moral force of character, and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates. . . It is an elaborate array of qualities that is there set forth; and possibly it is too much to expect that they should all be present in the person of every candidate for a Rhodes Scholarship. Yet it is pleasing to be able to record that, at any rate so far as New Zealand is concerned, the standard of the scholars selected has been uniformly high, and every one of them has proved a credit both to his home college and to the country he has represented at Oxford. There have been one or two men .whose genius was more pronounced on the Rugby field than in the study, and. on the other hand, one or two whose fondness for games has been considerably more marked than their ability in the same; but for the most part the four-square type which Rhodes sought has been found. Few better examples of sound scholarship and athletic prowess—of the mens sana in eorpore sano of the ancients —could be found than in the two new scholars now elected. Mr. Low is one of the finest all-round * athletes that the Christchurch Boys’ High School has ever turned out. He is a past New Zealand champion broad jumper and quarter-mile hurdler, a past New Zealand intermediate swimming champion and record-holder, the present all-round track and field champion of the New Zealand University, and a determined attacking Rugby threequarter. As regards scholarship, he has been almost invariably at the top of his college classes and was last year’s New Zealand senior scholar in French. Mr. Barak has been more prominent than Mr. Low on the administrative side of college affairs, and has more of the qualities of leadership, but his academic record is equally brilliant more so 'in the secondary school stages —and his versatility on the • Rugby field (he can play anywhere from outside five-eighths to hooker) is matched only by his display of "football brains.’’ As a rifle shot, Mr. Barak promises to write New Zealand’s name on the honour lists of an Oxford sport that has not known it hitherto. One request only the Dominion will prefer to the 1926 Rhodes Scholars—that they come back again. Some of our most brilliant Rhodes Scholars have not come back; and, while it is a petty view to deny their talents the scope of a wider field, the thought persists that they should bring home to their native country something of the riches of Oxford. Rhodes himself planned to that end; and these young men are disciples of the Rhodes ideal.