EARL JELLICOE AT OXFORD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19551, 6 August 1925, Page 10

EARL JELLICOE AT OXFORD.

RECEIVES D.C.L. DEGREE. ORATOR’S LATIN WELCOME. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, June 25. The King and Queen were present at the garden party,in connection with the celebration of the quarter centenary ol Christ Church College, Oxford. Altogether some 3000 guests had been invited, but less than a hundred were in the Deanery garden, which is a charming place, flanked on three sides by the old walls of the Deanery itself, tire library, and the buildings of Canterbury Quad. The lawns are shaded by great trees, copper beech and chestnut, and the buildings are halt concealed under climbing ampelopsis and the foliage of lig and magnolia trees. Of the guests assembled there two-thirds were men, and less than half a dozen of those were not in academic costume. The blaze of scarlet and crimson of the doctors’ robes amid the setting of the greenery and old grey walls made a gorgeous spectacle The assembled College of Cardinals itself could not have made a more brilliant mass of colour; and among the ecclesiastical and academic dignitaries—archbishops, bishops, and reverend doctors—it was curious tb see, as splendid as the best of them, such figures as those of the Prime Minister and Mr Churchill. Lord JelJicoe, with Iris sword dangling from under his robes, and General Bruce, in khaki below the scarlet. HONORARY DEGREES.

The Encaenia tliis year was of mote than usual interest owing to the presence among the recipients of honorary degrees of the Prime Minister and Mr Churchill. The Sheldonian Theatre was filled to its utmost limit when the procession of doctors entered, and the proceedings were followed with enthusiasm. The ViceChancellor, the Warden of Wadham, presided. The Public Orator, Dr Godley, is seriously ill, but Mr A. B. Poynton, Fellow of the University, who acted as his deputy, fully maintained the high standard of wit and scholarship which is expected in the presentation of the new doctors.

The degree of D.C.L. was first conferred on Mr Baldwin, Lord Jellicoe of Scapa, Mr Churchill, and Sir Percy Cox; and the degree of D.Litt. on Professor Gaetano de Sanctis, of Turin, and the Hon. John Fortescue, Librarian of Windsor Castle. The Orator welcomed Lord Jellicoe, Virum et belli et pacis laudibus ornatum, on his return from New Zealand, and spoke of him as classium nostrarunß mens ac medulla, oov caput, merum sal. Every one knew the part he had played in naval warfare. If those who lived in ‘‘the groves of Academe” wished to understand what a great naval commander’s skill and valour could do they could turn to the stories of Themistocles, Conon, and Agrippa, but nowadays we must have recaui'so to science to comprehend naval warfare. Conjurabant in classem antiquam. . . . Ooniurant hodie, sed multo infestvus; quippe adiunctus est aer. Emergunt snbito non nymphae, sed monstra, natantia, Tisiphones odiis accensa. We owed it to Lord Jellicoe that our shores were, if not untouched, yet safe from the enemy invasion.

The Vice-Chancellor greeted Lord Jellicoe as vir fortissimo qui, insignium ducum priscorum verus et dignus successor, patriam tuam cura assidua et indefessa defendisti. In presenting Mr Fortoscuo, the Orator spoke of the pleasure of reading of _ the doings and the character of the British soldier. Militcs nostri quovis eunt, nihil detrectant; cquos cancs, feminas, infantes benigne tractant, hostes non barbare. Such was the picture presented in _Mr Fortescue’s great “History of the British Army,” truly a regis opus, undertaken first at his own expense and now nearly carried to a conclusion. He referred to his lectures on military history at Oxford, at which what was almost a miracle occurred: Quippe crescento praelectionum cumulo non decrescebat numerus audientium. Ho spoke also of his love of hunt in® and fishing and his knowledge of animals; and added in reference to the “Story of a Red Deer,’’ Musae leviori varan's more Sertorii Cervulo suo prolusit. The Vice-Chancellor’s tribute was Vir facundissime, qui studiis tuis et laborious effecisti no gloria Britannici excreitus longa nocte urgeatur.