Correspondence
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A Letter from Oxford
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The observer of life in Oxford finds his attention drawn to several points of interest in the history of the term. Though life in a university may change very little from year to year, there are, from time to time, modifications of opinion and behaviour which have significance. Events occur which for the first time make new elements in the general attitude to life readily noticeable.
The economic difficulties and political disturbances of the world have been slow to make their influence felt in Oxford. Numbers have not fallen and few institutions have found it necessary to contract their activities. But this term it has become clear that undergraduates have had their allowances cut down and have less money to spend. Luncheon parties and dinners are less frequent forms of entertainment than they were. The curtailment of spending power is also shown in the general tendency of terminal batters to drop. Even fashions in dress show the same thing : jackets with cuffs and elbows strengthened with leather to prolong life are very common in the streets. Conversation makes it evident that this change has brought with it a new outlook. Many more under- graduates are actively aware of the difficulties they will en- counter in the attempt to find a job on going down, and they begin to consider their future career long before reaching their last year. It is realized that many of the professions are over. full and that most of them yield no immediate livelihood. This has led to a reinforcement of the tendency to look for openings in all kinds of commerce and manufacture. Among the prominent figures in University life who went down, last summer are to be found a worker in a paper bag factory, another in a jam factory, and a seller of knitting wool. It is Interesting to repall that during the years of inflation great numbers of German students went into business who, in other circumstances, would have followed their fathers and chosen some professional career. It was a familiar com- plaint among German professors that they could keep none of their better pupils in the academic world.
Though the Union may not be representative of general opinion in Oxford to the same extent as last century, the debate of Thursday, February 9th, was important. The motion was "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country," and it was carried by 275 votes to 153. Whatever doubt may be felt about the taste of the wording of the motion, the fact remains that it was carried by a very large majority. There has been for some time in England a steadily growing determination among the young men and women who have grown up since the Wai not to allow themselves or their country to be involved in a repetition of the disasters of 1914-1933. This has bred a distrust of nationalism, and produced a frame of mind in which the watchwords and " slogans " of old loyalties have very little meaning. It is surprising that this movement should have shown itself in conservative Oxford and the event has significance. It is a waste of time to deplore a lack of patriotism and a mistake to suppose that the debate and its result are representative of nothing. What is im- portant is the simple fact that of the four hundred sufficiently interested to attend the debate 60 per cent, held this view. It is as advertising the existence and prevalence of these opinions among the Post-War generation that the debate is significant, and, it may be, as indicating a trend which will be of importance in politics when high positions can no longer be filled by men whose training and ideas were received before the War. It suggests a difference of point of view almost incredible to many of those to whom the Great War is a memory and an experience and not a mere fact of history. The under- graduates who came up last term were mostly born in 1914. Another topic of general interest has been the return from Canada and the United States of parties sent out by what is known, at any rate outside Oxford, as the Oxford Group. These missions met with great success and go some way to justify the claim of the Group to be a movement of national and world-wide importance. Meetings have been held both for dons and undergraduates during the term to report what had been done, and to consider what further part the Group was called upon to play. It is difficult to estimate the influence of the Croup and its activities. The proportion of undergraduates directly connected with the Group is not very large ; the number may be 200 or 300. But the interest aroused by their activities affects a very much larger circle- The Group is without doubt the most important new element in the religious life of the University. It is a move- ment of short and quick growth of which the future seems at present problematic. There is no evidence to suggest that it will peter out and no possibility of prophesying to what extent or in what direction it will develop. What the Group offers is essentially a way of life and a practical Christianity, not a theology or a new ecclesiastical polity. Its members arc not primarily interested in the solution of the great intellectual problems which surround any religion, and especially a historical religion like Christianity, not are they concerned to alter or unite the existing Churches and denominations. They claim to be not advocates but witnesses of Christ and His power, and insist on the personal and individual character of their approach to religion. So Ear their appeal has been greatest among the educated classes, especially among the young people of this class.
The methods of the Group are characterized by an excellent understanding of practical psychology which enables the direct application of Christianity and Christian principles to a whole series of problems which trouble great numbers of people to-day. A great part of the success that the Group has so far achieved is probably due to the fact that it is precisely these problems which older Christian bodies have often timidly avoided. There are i he problems and difficulties arising from social relations: they range from sex to self- consciousness and peculiarly affect young people. Orthodox Christians, especially evangelical Christians whether in the Church of England or Nonconformist have too often remained silent before these questions, and have, as it were, allowed a department of life to escape from direct illumination by Christianity. The other great problem with which the Group deals is that sense of futility and purposelessness which has tended more and more to dominate the minds of those who have come to see the world solely through the spectacles of Science. They see a Universe obedient to law but not instinct with purpose, they hear it prophesied that it and all that it contains is slowly moving to dissolution, and they draw the moral for themselves. To these again the members of the Group have come as witnesses of the direct intervention of the purposes of God in the affairs of men. They have offered a view of the Universe which leaves no room for a sense of futility since God demands and can use every moment of a man's life ad mato-rem Dei gloriam. It is the bold yet simple method used by the Group to deal with these and kindred questions that makes it challenge the interest of so many students in Oxford and elsewhere at the present day.
• Yet though these happenings are new and striking, they blend easily with the general pattern of University life which is to-day, as John Locke would have said, much the same as it has always been.—! am, Sir, &c.,
YOUR OXFORD CORRESPONDENT.
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