19 JUNE 1909, Page 3

The delegates to the Imperial Press Conference visited Oxford on

Monday, and were entertained at luncheon at All Souls on Tuesday by Lord Curzon, the Chancellor of the University. In an interesting speech Lord Curzon laid stress on the part played by Oxford in Empire-building and Empire consolidation,—by training Governors, Administrators, Judges, and journalists. Oxford, continued Lord Curzon, was no " Sleepy hollow, drugged with the spell of its own enchantment, or spending its time in drowsing on the memories of the past." They were all reformers in Oxford now, and very much alive. Referring to the Rhodes Scholars—of whom in a few years there would be some two thousand scattered throughout the English-speaking world—he expressed the hope that they would bear the imprint on them of that peculiar Oxford " that broad and humane liberal culture which was maeparably connected with the traditions of that University,

and which, in an age like the present, more and more given up to material and utilitarian pursuits, was worth more to nations than much gold and many diamonds."