UNIVERSITY IN MID-WEST

Southland Times, Issue 24001, 16 December 1939, Page 15

UNIVERSITY IN MID-WEST

Mr J. B. Priestley’s Impressions

“I have in my head a composite picture of a large Middle-Western university,” writes Mr J. B. Priestley in “Rain Upon Godshill,” in which are impressions of a lecture tour in the United States. “I see myself arriving at a smallish station, being met by two or three pleasant young fellows, who drive me through an uninteresting town to where the university looms on the hill. We cross an enormous campus, like a young battlefield. lam shown the hall in which I shall speak, which is usually the big hall of the union building. It looks about the size of Waterloo station. . “This union building is buzzing and crackling with students of both sexes, who are playing basketball or the piano, practising tap-dancing, painting scenery, eating ice-cream and looking at Life and Time. There are thousands of them. Then there is always a keen spectacled girl who interviews you for the university magazine. There is nearly always a sort of demi-god-like young man, who is the captain and leader of everything. “These universities are not handling a picked few, but are taking annually whole army corps of lads and girls, from tiny towns and scattered farms, and turning them for a year or two into students. Once you grasp the size and scope of this cultural venture, see these laboratories and libraries and lecture halls and little theatres against the dusty ocean of prairie, your criticism sticks in your throat.”