A Miner's Welfare
A Pitman Looks at Oxford. By Roger Dataller. (Dent. bs.) Tim author of this interesting journal, a young Yorkshire pitman, went up to Oxford in 1928 with a miner's welfare scholarship. We meet many persons of reputation in his com- pany—Cole, Maxton, Canon Streeter and Dean Inge, Blunden, Tagore and Gilbert Murray, plus several of the better known comic turns of the intellectual demi-monde. There are no signs of the success-snob about him, however. He does not parade his celebrities. When necessary, as in the ease of Dean Inge, he allows them to speak for themselves ; and no further criticism is needed. One is aware of the deep-grained scep- ticism of the miner in many of his sketches, a quality more interesting than the cerebral cynicism of the ex-public school intellectual. Mr. Dataller gives generous credit to the univer- sity for the many benefits she offered him : he is equally out- spoken in his attacks upon certain aspects of the system— presumption upon service, idleness and licensed infant.lity. When he praises, he does so without gush ; when he criticizes, he is neither irresponsible nor hysterical. His attitude throughout appears more adult than that of the average " upper-class " undergraduate. This core of sobriety and good sense in his writing differentiates it from the nick of books about university life. Mr. Dataller, indeed, is clearly one of those. people, rare enough in the past two centuries, who justify the original foundation. He contrives.to impart his enthusiasm over the subject for his B.Litt. thesis : and we find, comparing the later entries in the journal with the earlier, a refinement of expression and a broadening of sympathy, while his independence of judgement seems un-
impaired. This is an unpretentious book ; but it is well worth reading, and there is enough in it to make one hope that the author has not done with writing now he has returned to
Previous page
