EUROPEAN STUDENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19998, 15 November 1927, Page 11

EUROPEAN STUDENTS

POST-WAR CONDITIONS ADDRESS TO ROTARIANS An insight into the conditions among students in post-war Europe, was given members of the Wanganui Rotary Club at the weekly luncheon, yesterday when an address was delivered by Mr Donald Grant, M.A., organising secretary of the Student Christian movement! Mr Grant was one of a committee of professors connected with the World’s Student Christian Federation in Europe from 1920 to 1925 who assisted in the relief of students who had been impoverished by the war. Mr Grant said that it was embarrassing at times to have to distribute money and secondhand clothing to men of distinction in the academic world and their families, but they had been reduced to such desperate straits that they had to swallow a good deal of their pride and accept the assistance offered by sympathetic people all over the world. Although students and professors in Europe were not in such urgent meed of relief now as in the years immediately following the Great War, some was still being given, but the relief work had developed into self-help organisations in which students worked in the summer months so that they might continue their studies in the winter. New Zealanders contributed not a little to the relief of European students from 1920 to 1925, and their assistance was greatly appreciated. The World’s Student Christian Federation, which organised relief throughout the world, provided food, clothing, tospital treatment, and literature for the students of Europe who had been given such a serious set-back by the war. Assisttance was given in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Germany. Happily, said Mr Grant, conditions were now considerably improved, and the student was now helping himself. Now, the students were expected to learn a trade as well as a profession so that he might be able to work his way through college and university. This was helping the student to understand the working man because he was working beside him, and this was the beginning of co-operation between the worker and the professional man. The students were building their own hostels and school,s and only those who contributed to the manual work were able to enter the institutions later. They were working in all manner of trades to earn the means by which they could pass through the universities.

Mr Grant also mentibned the change that was taking place in the minds of the peoples of Europe, especially among the young people. Th© nations that had for centuries borne nothing but hatred and malice towards each other were beginning to understand each other and, although they still held their own political opinions, they were becoming more tolerant and respectful.