OXFORD UNIVERSITY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21976, 10 June 1933, Page 4

OXFORD UNIVERSITY

AVERSIONS AND IMPRESSIONS " Red Rags. Essays of Hate from Oxford.” Edited by Richard Comyns Carr. London: Chapman and Hall. (6s net.) “ A Pitman Looks at Oxford." By Roger Dataller. London: Dent. (5s net.) “Handbook to the University of Oxford.” Illustrated. Oxford: The Clarendon Press (Mr Humphrey Milford.) (5s net.) The Hate-squad Oxford University seems to be most in the public eye just now for the surprising manner in which the union went on record as being opposed to fighting for_ King and country. It was emphasised in the London press—perhaps’ over-emphasised—-that the voice of the undergraduate is not necessarily the voice of responsibility, and that in any 'case the Union Society represents only a part of student opinion. Now comes “Red Rags,” to assure, the apprehensive that if part of the University dislikes war, and that excessively, that antipathy is not the (inly one entertained at Oxford. This volume, which is most appropriately bound in tattered seeming cloth of scarlet, contains 18 essays by 18 graduates and undergraduates, in which they proscribe 18 fancies and aversions of ordinary mankind from purveyors of “ sex-bunk ” to deseerators of the family-. It is 'a lively book, and very often witty. It can be read with some profit, even although one may suspect, at times, that the Oxford tongue seeks inspiration in the Oxford cheek as this author or that screws up his hate to scribbling point. One of the best informed haters is Mr Robert Bernays, a young Liberal M.P., who has gained experience .of authorship as an essayist and of the Commons as Undersecretary for the Colonies prior to the Liberal resignations last September. His particular aversion is “The Diehards,” who are somewhat vaguely described as occupying a corner the author calls “the millionaires’ bench. ■ There sit “ the hard-faced men who did well out of the war,”, he cries. “ They are ageing a little now, for it is fourteen years since the last shell factory closed down. Every post-war Parliament has known them. The vicissitudes of party fortunes mean nothing to them. For money is as useful in buying safe seats as it once was in buying baronetcies. I hate them, as I hate no other element in English public life.” Mr Bernays is most emphatic about it all, but his “strafe” fails to illumine to any extent the specific causes of his discontent. And he concludes quite generously with the admission that * the best elements of the Conservative Party are quite out of sympathy with the Diehards, and in any case they have no power left. On’ the whole, his is an unsatisfactory hate, resembling mere disapproval. One feels that after his first denunciation he should have loaded the objects of. his disregard with parliamentary expletives, torn them asunder with pincers whitened in the heat of political passion, 1 and sprinkled graduate epigrams of contumely on their graves. Mr Derek Walker*Smith. the son of an M.P., is more precise and reasoned in expressing his distaste for international snobbery, and he will probably have “the Diehards” with him when he deplores the state of England to-day. The English, he declares, are departing from their traditional line of development and worshipping at the shrine of false or foreign deities. “No culture can subsist without faith,” he mourns, and faith has gone from England to-day. Among the other subjects of discourse by these on the whole impartially-minded haters are “Cricket and the Cromwell Cult,” “ Dislikes In the Theatre,” garden cities, Buchmanitea, orthodoxy, literary persons, and Italy. The volume is rounded off', gracefully with an epilogue by the late Mr Justice M'Cardie, who was stirred by it.

Pithead to Cloister Mr Dataller, the author of “A Pitman Looks at Oxford,” surveys the university with an eye less accustomed to its orderly charm, and more critical, than that of the average undergaduate, but he is essentially fair-minded, even in his criticisms of features which offended a nature trained by necessity to frugality. He began to earn his living at the age of thirteen as a bottle-washer in a mineral water factory, and after rising to the position of colliery timekeeper he went up

to Oxford on a Miner’s Welfare scholarship. One can imagine the strangeness of his experience, the sudden transition from a colliery community to a leisurely town in which the tradesmen, with some cheerfulness, carry a-quarter of a million pounds of bad debts on their books and give credit to any undergraduate who asks for it. Mr Dataller made many interesting contacts, and offended only when he tried to tell a gracious hostess of the squalor in which the miners live. He has gathered impressions of Dean Inge, Edmund Blunden, Gilbert Murray, James Maxton, and others, which are set down with fairness and restraint, and he has kept free from any extravagant bias, political or social. He predicts that Oxford will become in time as democratic as himself;Educational privilege is doomed. Every event points to the whole course of education as the monopoly of the State, and absolutely free, with equality of opportunity for every one of its children. That Oxford University will occupy a place in such a system I have no manner of doubt; but that the position will not be assumed without some elimination of ■ prevailing values is equally apparent. Mr Dataller, with his candid, uninhibited judgments, on the university, might be regarded as a pioneer of this development, but if so he will be lonely yet. awhile. The University Handbook Against two Oxford , books of ephemeral if acute interest one might place the Oxford University Handbook, with its concise yet comprehensive assessment of what Oxford is, and what it stands for. This well-produced volume forms a handbook of an authoritative nature, historical and contemporary. The' first, part, by Sir Charles Mallet, consists of a short history of the University from its mediaeval foundations. Attention is paid inV separate chapters to the early colleges, the Tudor age, Stuart and Jacobite Oxford and the university to-day. Thence follow naturally the accounts of specific features of modern university life. Among the sections are women’s education at Oxford by the principal of Lady Margaret Hall; college architecture, by E. A. Greening Lamborn; college life, by the warden of Rhodes House; research in the humane studies, by Professor Powicke; the libraries, by Professor G. N. Clark; and articles on religion, music, .sports, scientific research, etc. Sir Michael ,Sadler, writes on “ Callings and Careers,” , .Finally, under the general heading . of. general information, we receive details .of .courses, scholarships, societies, and other matters of particular interest to the potential, undergraduate. This excellent. work .is most fully illustrated, mainly with, .reproductions from Ingram’s “Memorials.”.,. A. L. F.