International Gifts
American generosity, manifested not so long ago in the constitution of the Pilgrim Trust for our benefit, is illustrated anew in the Rockefeller Trust's conditional offer of 2,300,000 dollars to meet three-fifths of the cost of the new Bodleian library buildings at Oxford. The remainder, £377,000, has to be subscribed by the end of 1936 if the offer is to hold good, but that very reasonable proviso will, we trust, occasion no great difficulty. Oxford, with its many American Rhodes scholars, now has old friends in every State of the Union, and Rhodes' far-sighted bequest is yielding the good results that he anticipated in bringing educated English- men and Americans closer together. By a happy coin- cidence the news of the Rockefeller offer to Oxford was given out on the same day as the announcement of Lord Rosebery's gift of his late father's villas at Posilipo, near Naples, to the Italian nation. It is hoped that this famous estate, already scheduled as an Italian national monument. will serve Signor Mussolini and his successors as a holiday resort, like our Chequers.
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