The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge did well to draw attention, in
his address to the Senate on Tuesday, to the fact that the University is short of lodgings for about 1,200 undergraduates because about 1,200 civil servants have been planted on the town as staffs of the regional offices of no fewer than nine different Ministries—a number which, I believe, is likely to be increased. Now administrative decentralisation may be a good thing ; I am quite ready to believe that it is ; and Cambridge may be both a convenient and an agreeable centre for civil servants in the Eastern Region. But it is not the only possible centre ; Bury St. Edmunds and Colchester suggest themselves as alternatives. It is, indeed, one of the few towns in the country which ought in no circumstances to be called on to suffer this invasion. The University is being urged to take as many ex-Service men as possible ; but for the civil servants it could take over a thousand more than it can take as things are. The Barlow Report, indeed, urges that the number of undergraduates in the universities of the country be doubled in ten years. Is the Govern- ment to press this policy, or as much of it as practicable, co Cambridge and at the same time maintain administrative provisions which leave Cambridge helpless? This is really a case for Cabinet consideration and decision.
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