RHODES SCHOLARS
Sm,—Janus's recent paragraph about the revival of Rhodes Scholarships may possibly give rise to some misunderstanding. As soon as the European war ended the Rhodes Trustees made arrangements for the immediate restoration of the scholarships wherever possible. Elections will shortly be held in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Bermuda and Malta. A considerable number of additional scholarships, many of them confined to ex-Service men, have been created ad hoc to compensate, partially at least, for the scholarships suspended during the war. Special concessions have been made to ex-Service candidates. But Rhodes Scholars are elected, by an elaborate machinery, in different and distant parts of the world, and there is always an interval—unavoidable by reason of the Oxford collegiate system—of at least nine months between their local election and their coming into residence at Oxford. All the scholars now about to be elected will therefore come into residence in October, 1946, and the only scholars who are coming up in 1945 are those who were previously elected and whose scholarships have been post- poned or interrupted by war service. Some of these have now obtained their release.
With regard to the United States, where the machinery of election is specially complex, it is more than "doubtful," as Janus says, whether any American Rhodes Scholars will come to Oxford in 1945 ; it is impossible. What is doubtful, at this moment of writing, is whether elections can be held in time for American Rhodes Scholars to come up by October, 1946. That will depend on the decision of Congress about the Draft Law. The probability at present is that no newly-elected United States Rhodes Scholars will reach Oxford before October, 1947, though it is hoped that a number of those elected in 1939, who were prevented by the Neutrality Law from taking up their scholarships, will be able to do so in 1946. With regard to Janus's last sentence, I have no authority to speak for the Rhodes Trustees, but I think I shall not mis- interpret them in saying that there is not the smallest intention of reviving the German Rhodes Scholarships either now or within any predictable
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