TWO UNIVERSITIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19584, 14 September 1925, Page 8

TWO UNIVERSITIES.

TRADITIONS AND TROUSERS. HUMOUR OF “MR PUNCH.” What was described as “a delightfully irrelevant speech,” was made by Mr A. P. Herbert, oi Punch, in replying to the ad-ores-i of welcome on the occasion of the visit ol the Empire Press delegates to the University ol Sydney last week. “1 feel in this great hall and solemn atmosphere, said Mr Herbert, "like that famous Duke of Devonshire who dreamed that he was making a speech in the House of Lorus, and woke up lo find that he was really doing so.” The Deputy-chancellor had spoken of the youth of the university, and though its traditions and trousers had not grown with the centuries, it was not the loss wonderful. Mr Herbert said that he belonged to the tragic generation of Oxford which took its schools in June, 1914. and its squad drill in the following August. He would like to assure everyone that nothing he had learnt at Oxford had been of the smallest practical use to him. He had learnt socialism in his first term, and had grown out of it in the second; he had learnt to smoke a pipe apd to play cards, ana had been diligently practising these exercises ever since. This was not his first contact with Australia, continued Mr Herbert, for ho had lived with an Australian in a dugout on Gallipoli for a long time. They bud spent happy days in the mud there educating one another. Ail over the world, concluded Mr Herbert, amid laughter, the press delegation had been, wandering, frightening Nature out of her courses in the moat extraordinary way. Rain had fallen as it had never fallen before in the Rocky Mountains, not one bear had appeared—but everywhere people had met them with a fervid generosity. “In the beloved nams of Oxford 1 thank you for this welcome.”