RHODES SCHOLARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19675, 29 June 1927, Page 14

RHODES SCHOLARS.

Sir,—A recent cable deals with certain aspects of the Rhodes Scholarships and brings back to my mind more than one conversation I had some 40 odd years back with their founder, who was then a young member of the Cape Parliament. Mr. Rhodes was, above all, a dreamer, keen business man though he might be. He had an almost superstitious belief in what he called the Oxford spirit. The phrase was often on his lips. Now, at a particular period, about 1883, a friend of mine was debating in his mind whether he would send his younger brother to Oxford after he matriculated at the Cape,,or enter him at once at one of the Oxford colleges. Rhodes strongly advised the latter course. I well remember him saving: "Catch them young, and imbue them with the Oxford spirit, and they'll be all right." For learning, qua learning, I don't think Rhodes cared' over-much. As a matter of fact, he admitted he could not with much pleasure read the Latin or Greek classics in the original. He had been ail in translations, but he did believe in some special, nay, almost magical, quality in the Oxford spirit- and training. A large number of Englishmen have the same feeling about the public school idea. For the above reason—and others too long to be dealt with here—l venture to think that the practice of sending M-A.'s. and meg, sometimes of wide reputation for .science as in the case of a , Victorian (Australian) scholar, to Oxford, does not at all carry out what Rhodes had in his mind. J.W.L.