THE DEFINITION OF A RHODES SCHOLAR.
(HERE is now on the way from New York to Oxford a great volume of sealed papers, being the first examina- tion ofthe first batch of candidates for the Rhodes Scholar- ships. It was agreed at the beginning of the negotiations between the trustees of the will and the Oxford authorities that until the whole organisation was in working order a sort. of Imperial Responsions should be held, which should enable Oxford examiners, in protection of themselves and in assist- ance of others, to make a first sifting of the candidates. But it is not expected that, this qualifying examination will be per- manent. " Scholars" should not need the sifting of a Smalls canon, and- it is presumed in the arrangement - made with Colonial- and American authorities that the scholars will be up;to matriculation standard. It was the first, but not the most important, of the details settled by. Mr. Parkin. During his second tour of the Empire he found everywhere an enthusiasm for the Rhodes ideal which surprised even: his sanguine expectations, though the welcome did not preclude a fair degree of the quarrelling usually associated with the reception of beneficent bequests. In New South Wales, in Newfoundland, and to some extent in South Africa and America, Mr. Parkin, as representative of the trustees, has been vehemently attacked for deliberately setting aside the wishes of Mr. Rhodes by his preference for graduate rather than schoolboy candidates; and in a less personal form Oxford common-rooms are still hotly debating, among many sub- sidiary points, whether the intention of the will or the good of Oxford scholarship is more imperative. The will itself in all details of organisation was intended rather to suggest than to bind. Mr. Rhodes was a man who preferred not to hamper his imagination by any excessive consideration of practical details. It is, for example, quite clear from the will that he, " the Empire-builder," was wholly ignorant of the number and nature of the provinces of Canada„ and no one will quarrel with the trustees, who have appointed a Canadian as their agent, for a posthumous correction of the ignorance. Never- . theless, it-must, be allowed that on the graduate question a general consideration of his intentions distinctly suggests that he was thinking not at all of scholarship, and very, much of the. yaw schoolboy, whe,n he first sketched out his plan. Unfortunately, one difficulty, which Mr. Parkin has found insuperable,_. did not then suggest itself. In the United States and in many of the Colonies there is no equivalent to the English schoolboy. In the United States "men" go up to " College" as young as Gibbon went up to Oxford ; but even if we grant a superior forwardness in American youth, boys who Come up to Oxford at sixteen would necessarily in games and in the schools find themselves wholly outclassed by men of an average. three. years older, and in their disappointment might carry away from Oxford views unhappily similar to Gibbon's. Nor inmost American schools is there anything of `the corporate spirit, without which selection on the Rhodes principle were impossible. The institution of school elevens is:unknown, and boys 'belong to various local ball clubs about the district -where they-live.. They know little or nothing of each. other's character and prowess ; they are innocent of the rough-and-tumble of boarding-school competition. All this experience begins at College. If the school were
taken as the unit, the process of selection, sufficiently intricate under any conditions, would be considerably com- plicated. According to the present scheme, in the United States alone simultaneous examinations have to be held at fifty-five centres ; and even in Nebraska, where one would expect the competition to be least keen, more than fifty candidates have offered themselves. Supposing that in the State of New York each of the schools, of which there are something like a thousand, had been allowed to send up candidates, the number would scarcely have been contained in any hall in the State, the task of organisation would have needed a permanent secretary, and the successful candidates, owing to the extreme difficulty of finding a comparative test of character, would tend to fall under the genus of " competition wallahs." In a few years, if, in obedience to the present tendency, boys continue to leave the schools yet earlier in life, Oxford might be asked to accept a number of scholars who would not be out of their "teens" when they took their degrees. Such were the reasons which, after hot discussion, led to the present agreement by which it is made a necessary qualification for all candidates that they should have spent two years at College. There will be modifications in the several Colonies according to local desires and conditions, but a great majority of the hundred or more scholars who will come into residence this year will have in some sense already graduated.
Will they be of the type which Mr. Rhodes thought his system of examination—a word which he and the trustees carefully avoided—would best discover? It may perhips be accepted as an omen that the few Germans already in resi- dence are wholly admirable types, neither " brutal athletes " nor finical pedants, but men by character and circumstance likely to be of political and social influence in their country. The Kaiser has been loyal to the conditions. To insist on Mr. Rhodes's syllabus being exactly followed everywhere and by all the judges was impossible, and his ideas were in them-. selves amateurish and suggestive enough to prompt various constructions. But the trustees have adopted a rather, ingenious method • of giving effective sanction to their own". interpretation. A leaflet of instructions has been sent to the " Selection Committees "—the phrase studiously adopted in place of "examiners "—in which they are instructed to select men of "power and promise"; and in support of this general exhortation every scholar must show a paper containing a guarantee that he is of a " manliness, culture, and character " representative of the best in the State by which he is selected. Of scholarship not a word. But the attributes picked out by the trustees compose as accurate an epitome as could be desired of the spirit of Mr. Rhodes's recommendations. The character of the Committee, in many cases a triumvirate, is of a nature calculated to ensure loyalty to the principle of election. Almost without an exception, the Governors of the several States in America have shown eagerness to sit on the Committees ; and there is certainly nothing in American politics to induce the belief that its representative politicians are likely to exaggerate intellectual above physical claims. At first, at any rate, a natural Chauvinism, which is marked nowhere more strongly than in America and Canada, will . promote the selection of "proper" men, on the same principle of motive as recently induced many of , the nations, notably the Japanese, to send to Pekin the finest figures of men in their armies.
At Oxford _the associations of the word " graduate" have- created some alarm that the scholars may demand more utilitarian and - more advanced schools ; may thus, at least in the lecture-room, miss the natural fellowship which it was Mr.. Rhodes's chief aim to foster; and may impose on' Oxford extrinsic canons of educational culture. An Oxford "School of Hygiene," a thing imagination boggles at, is quoted as the culminating menace, and the presence of n number of men absolved from College or University exami- nations on the ground that Mods. and Greats have nothing to teach them might be destructive both of dignity and disci- pline. Already some such difficulty has arisen, to the trouble of the College authorities. One scholar wishes to read for, a Civil Service examination in Germany, and finds that he has no time to " waste " on Oxford schools. Another wishes to leave after a year, again on the ground of waste of time. This demand for a shortening of the three years' course. is likely to be heard often. In the Colonies and in the United States, where to be librement occupe is to be idle, men think tlethselves loiterers if they are not making money a year or two 'before they come of age. If they delay .in statu�ripillari, they feel very much as a Lieutenant who has lost half a year's seniority and allowed a junior "batch" to go by him. The necessity put on many of the scholars of spending vacations in England_ will add to this desire to cut short 'the period. Will Oxford be urged to organise a special two years, or even one year's, course ? But these are questions, though of vital importance to the fulfilment of Mr. Rhodes's desires, not yet critical, at least in their wider reference. The German scholars, after all, only come in in a codicil, and the larger issue may be postponed till it is seen whether there is justifi- cation for the alarms that the new "young Oxford" may include, as was first feared, backwoodsmen too rough, or, according to the later anticipation, physicists too special, for an old institution to absorb comfortably.
The social arrangements at Oxford are admirably designed to carry out the principle of absorption. No College is to take more than five, and none less than two, scholars; and the distribution is to be made at first on some system of ballot. The scholars have been allotted a special Tribune of their own, who, to perfect the zeal of his advocacy for his new clients, has severed himself from all closer connections with his College. He will hold a brief for the scholars against the University if interests should at any time be supposed to clash. But the common possession of a Tribune, even if he includes in him- self the functions of tutor, censor, and friend, will not in any degree risk interference with social absorption ; and it is to be hoped that any attempt to form an American or Colonial club will be resisted. Difficulties on the question of schools will be prolific of discussion between the representative of .the scholars and the several Colleges ; but within the last few years, as if in anticipation of the new development, consider- able elasticity has been given to the Oxford system. Research degrees are established, and study for them either in letters or science entails no compulsory obedience to the dictates of a syllabus. They are open, of course, only to graduates; but there is in preparation a scheme by which much wider recog- nition will be given to the graduate status, as defined in different parts of the world, and facilities, it is thought, may be offered for testing by examination in any one part of the Empire the fitness of scholars anxious to study research in another. Ultimately, and apart from this special object, the Selection Committees may prove an admirable instrument ready for any general scheme of educational co-ordination and comparison.
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