RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 8, 1 August 1930, Page 3

RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS

RETURN OF THE GERMANS. AIMS OF THE FOUNDER. LONDON. June 19. More than a hundred Rhodes Scholars, who this week have completed their three years at Oxford and are about to return home, were guests of the Rhodes Trustees at the annual dinner at Rhodes House. Mr. E. R. Peacock was in the chair, and the Rhodes Trustees were also represented at the dinner by Mr. Geoffrey Dawson and Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Warden of New College. Sir James Parr was among those present. A break was made with the usual prac(ticc in that both Mr. Fisher and the headmaster of Wellington College spoke not to a toast, but to the words from the will of Cecil Rhodes, “Educational Relations make the strongest tie.” Mr. Fisher said: “It has been asked whether the romantic dream of Rhodes was not shattered by the calamitous circumstances of the Great War. That is not the view of the Rhodes trustees. Rhodes took the view that it was essen- ' tial, for the furtherance of world peace and prosperity, that the British Empire j and the American Republics and the j German nation should co-operatc to- j

gether. “We believe that, although the friendship was interrupted by the circumstan- I ces of the war, that the Rhodes scholarships, within an area necessarily limited by the circumstances of the time, have been beneficial. They did enable young Germans and . young , Englishmen to know one another, to respect one another, and to obtain a more just view ; of the fine points which arc distinctive j of the civilisations of these two branches of the Teutonic race. Accordingly we, | the Rhodes trustees, have now come to 1 the decision that we shall renew the German scholarships, and next term a certain number of German scholars are coming back to Oxford. “Is it altogether a vain thing that the universities and the young men of the ( universities have a part to play in bring- j ing the .world closer together? I do not think so.”