NEW RHODES SCHOLARS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20111, 23 November 1928, Page 12

NEW RHODES SCHOLARS.

Two "Rhodes scholars have been chosen to continue their studies at Oxford, and to carry on the tradition that the men New Zealand sends there need fear comparison with the representatives of no country covered by the Rhodes bequest. This year's selection also brings the pleasant task of congratulating yet another Auckland student oil having won the Idue ribbon of a student's career. Mr. Bailey, with a brilliant scholastic and a sound athletic re-, cord, appeals as the type of candidate bound to command the attention of the committee, working on the essential qualifications laid down by Cecil Rhodes. He, too, will find a high tradition to maintain, for the previous scholars sent from Auckland have not failed to make their mark in both the intellectual and the athletic life of Oxford. It is worth remarking that Mr. Bailey contemplates a course of study that will bring him back to New Zealand to seek a career when it is ended. There has been much discussion over the way in which "Rhodes scholars, once elected, have been lost to the country which produced them. A moral obligation to return can perhaps be established, but it is difficult to sustain in face of practical conditions if the course of study followed at Oxford, predetermined perhaps by the scholar's career beforo he was selected, leaves him with no prospect 'of a suitable opening in the land of 'his birth This prospect is negligible with the men who go from the United States: it is far from negligible will) those selit by a country like New Zealand. There is ,no need to reproach either the scholars or (he country that has sent them. Rhodes, in laying down conditions, stated an ideal, but it has never been shown that he expcctcd it to be realised to the last fraction lie was a practical man as well as an idealist, and to see some part of his hopes realised would no doubt have left him not ill content. Though this is the other side of the case, it cannot in any way sub tract from tho satisfaction that Auckland's newest scholar, from the very time of election, hopes to return to New Zealand when his student lifo ends.