WANDERING SCHOLARS

Taranaki Daily News, 18 August 1934, Page 22 (Supplement)

WANDERING SCHOLARS

BRAINS ON THE SCRAP HEAP. THIS VERY KIND WORLD. The Wandering Scholars of medieval days found their scholarship a key to most doors. The Wandering Scholars of to-day driven out of their country by political tyranny, are not so fortunate; and had it had not been for the Academic Assistance Council their plight would have been almost hopeless. The Council’s report on its first year’s work makes us thankful to that someone who is ever ready to take up another’s cause and see justice done. Here is a body of academic men and women who are not only helping their fellow scholars and scientists, but making a stand for the freedom of knowledge and the integrity of science. With Lord Rutherford ts President, in a London office in Burlington House lent by the Royal Society, the Academic Assistance Council was set up to help all university professors and research workers who, on grounds of religion, political opinion, or race, are unable to carry on their work/in. their own country. Had such a Council been formed several years ago it would have been the greatest help to the tragic crowd of learned men, escaping or exiled from Russia and Italy, whose alents have mainly been thrown on the scrap heap of revolution; but when their numbers were last year swollen so appallingly by the scholar refugees from Germany the need of assistance became imperative.

With little more than £13,000 (of which £2500 was contributed by the Central British Fund for German Jewry—though the assistance given is by no means limited to Jews) the Council has supplied ■ maintenance grants of £lB2 a year for a single person, and £250 for married folk.' Most of the capital is already used up in this way, and more is urgently needed. But monetary assistance is only a temporary measure; the aim is to find openings where these scholars may continue their’ work without in any way injuring the interests of their colleague hosts or alienating their sympathy. Of the 1200 university teachers turned out of Germany only 389 are known to have found even temporary places, and of these 178 are at work in this country. ; London University has 67 as research guests; -Cambridge has welcomed 31 and has given £1000; Oxford has 17, while Manchester has 16, and has raised a, local fund to support them. The staff members of the London School of Economics have voluntarily put aside a percentage of their salaries for three years, and British university teachers generally have given generously. The Council gives grants, is a clearing station for all information, and acts as a kind of world- academic labour exchange. The Turkish University of Istanbul has taken 30 teachers off its books. Invitations have come from South America, India, Japan, China, Persia, the British Dominions, and even a changing Russia, all keen to enrich themselves with this exiled talent. If only enough money can be found to keep the exiles alive and their scholarship undulled there is a chance that with returning prosperity they may all be absorbed. As Professor Trevelyn says: Here is the only answer to foreign tyranny that we can profitably make. Political passions are for ever destroying the best results of civilisation; let us pick up as many basketfuls of the fragments as we can gather.