TRAVEL WILL AID EMPIRE PROGRESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17831, 27 April 1926, Page 14

TRAVEL WILL AID EMPIRE PROGRESS.

SCHOLARSHIPS IN MILNER’S MEMORY. ' (Special to the “Star.") WELLINGTON, April 26. To help Imperial progress and social development, Empire-wide travel and research scholarships are proposed in memory o€ the late Lord Milner, who graduated through law and journalism to an Imperial executive position in Egypt and South Africa. The Prime Minister (the Right Hon J. G. Coates) has received a. communication from the High Commissioner with reference to an appeal being made in connection with the Milner Memorial Fund. A small committee of which Lord Balfour has been chairman, and Mr L. S. Amerv, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, vice-chairman, has for some months been considering on behalf of a large committee, comprising most men in public life in the United Kingdom, what would be the most appropriate way of honouring the late Lord Milner’s memory. The conclusion arrived at was that the system of travelling and research fellowships and prizes for the study of questions connected with Empire development and social amelioration would be most appropriate, not only because the late Lord Milner regarded these two groups of questions as inseparably connected, and believed that their successful solution depended on the study and dissemination of more accurate knowledge, but also because he himself owed all his chances early in life to the scholarships he won, and he was always greatly interested in helping forward younger men and giving them a chance.

The scheme will be very elastic, including at one end of the scale travelling fellowships costing up to £SOO a year for students visiting the dominions, and devoting themselves to some special branch of economic study, and on the other hand comparatively small prizes to stimulate interest and sufficient just to help a poor student through his course or to enable a young author to get a book published, which might not otherwise find its publisher.

The committee is anxious to raise a really large fund and to secure support from every part of the Empire, and it is hoped that the idea of the scheme will commend itself. The first few hundred pounds of the fund raised will be devoted to an appropriate memorial tablet in Westminster Abbey.

It was further stated that at a meeting of the executive committee the question of eligibility to the prizes and fellowships was raised, and that all agreed that tl&re would be no limitation to residents of the United Kingdom, but that the idea would be to encourage the study of these Empire and social questions as far as the money available would permit, by students from every part of the Empire.

The Prime Minister feels that the object for which the money is being raised will appeal to many New Zealanders, and he has, therefore, given instructions that facilities should be given for those who wish to contribute to the fund to forward their amounts to the Department of Internal Affairs for remission to the High Commissioner, who will pay over the amounts donated to the trustees of the fund in Great Britain.