Cambridge
IT has been very generally recognized by the public that Cambridge is faced with the problem of raising a considerable sum of money, if it is to take advantage of the munificent offer recently made by the Rockefeller (or International) Education Board. The precise sum still lacking is £145,000. Recently appears the news that from a dramatically unexpected source will of the late Mr. John Humphrey Plummer—Cam- bridge seience may benefit to the extent of a quarter of a million. Is the desired goal then reached and indeed overshot by 1105,000 ? It cannot be made too clear that this is not the case. It appears, among other considerations, that the Inter- national Education Board specifically excluded all legacies from counting towards the -completion of their scheme. Cam- bridge men will perform a service in correcting an erroneous impression, which has obtained widely and might conceivably cool- the ardour of the generous benefactor for whom the University still looks.
It cannot be doubted that the introduction of life giving streams of capital will change, or perhaps continue the change of, University life. There will be new buildings, new teachers, new types of graduate and post-graduate workers. The very fact that the Exchequer and the Empire Marketing Board have made generous contributions marks the Government's appreciation of the work done in Cambridge to provide training for cadets destined to work all over our agricultural Empire in the tropics and throughout every type of Government service. We train now Colonial cadets, Sapper and Air Force Officers, the future experts of commercial firms (be they geologists, agriculturalists or engineers) and a dozen other types which were not represented • in the Cambridge of thirty years ago.
But it is well to remember that as the keystone of the British Army was said to be the non-commissioned officer, so the keystone of Oxford and Cambridge is the College system. Without it they cannot perform that which in every new direction is being demanded of them. There were days when so-called reformers spoke of abolishing the College system. That attitude is not to be found to-day in even the most radical of academic circles. Yet the endowments of the Colleges have hardly kept pace with their requirements. The new University type is not a rich type : one of the most useful functions performed by Oxford and Cambridge is that of encouraging towards the University (by Scholarships) new classes from new types of schools. College for College, Cam- bridge Colleges are poorer than those at Oxford : some Cam- bridge Colleges are really seriously pinched. Let not the would-be benefactor of Academe forget that, when Cambridge has gathered in its £145,000, there are some twenty historic institutions which can" give unique return for any pious act of munificence.
The rew Registry of Parliamentary voters for the Univer- sity has been completed. It is not always realized by Cam- bridge men and women that it is no longer obligatory to obtain the M.A. (or higher degree) to be included on the register. To have taken the examinations leading to the B.A. degree (the Tripos or the Poll degree), to have applied to the Registrary of the University and to have paid a regis- tration fee of £1, is sufficient for. any British Cambridge man or woman of whatever seniority to qualify for inclusion. When it is realized that, the list grows by the addition of some thousand or more members a year it can be perceived that the work of a University Representative, whelk correspondence is perpetually growing, is very different from what it was in the days when his constituents were formed by a handful of clergymen who had retained their names upon the College Books.
The new wing of the FitzWilliam Museum is now sufficiently finished to show that a very noble addition to Cambridge architecture has been secured by Mr. S. C. Cockerel!. King's Parade and Trinity Street have lately been more fortunate than other roads. They owe to Peterhouse a new building beside the Master's Lodge which will rank as distinguished architecture among the few best designs in Cambridge,.. to King's leadership in the removal of unsightly railings, and to Gonville and Caius a clever piece of garden-planning in their none too happy court. Is the Preservation Society, like schenrs for prohibition, finding the conversion of society already in process of accomplishment ? C.
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