OXFORD IN AVAR TIME.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 16037, 20 October 1917, Page 7

OXFORD IN AVAR TIME.

fSTTCIAbir WRITTEN" FOB "niK TRESS.")

(By Gkorge W. Gotoh, author of "The Yeoman Adventurer.") Steady as a rock, swift as a swallow, tho. 4.55 from Paddington skims along tho river-flats. It is timed to do sixty-four miles in seventy minutes, and, like a proud racer, has bent-itself

to its work and is running three min-

utes ahead of time. Wittenham ■f Clumps havo disappeared at last; we havo flashed the bridge at Nunehßm; there is Ke'hnington Island; here at last is tho first glimpse of the majesty that is Oxford. The natural effect of Oxford —it is the explanation of the so-called "Oxford manner"—is to enlarge and endow tho mind of. the "fresher." He is lifted up, afflated, almost intoxicated. He cannot help himself. He draws on the.intellectual opulence of the place as on a common, fund. He is saved from his own mindlessnesß -by tho doctrine of imputed intelligence. Addison sauntered here;'Newman wrestled yonder. Here Gladstone argued; thoro Froudo doubted. The ''fresher's" mind, poor though it may he in native quality, is lilted up to a good average by the mighty minds that are and have been here, and when ho" goes down for his first vac., his ' mistaken sisters, who. havo never breathed this divine air, with one accordsay "swank."

By a canons chance I left Oxford, the old pro-war Oxford, the Oxford I knew and loved, on Saturday, August Ist, 1914. The war has smashed many things—mo amongst them —and a visit to the old haunts brings mingled momoneyof the days that -were, and of tho dreams that wero to he shapon. into, realities in tho stress and struggle "town." This effect of the war on oneself makes it natural to enquire what effect the war has Edd'on Oxford. " Practically ©very Oxford "man" has bis "twenty-firster" during his univer-sity-career of three or four, years. At eighteen a young man is now claimed by'his country, and Oxford is orphaned of his fresh young life. A few there are who, not being fit for military scr- ■ viccj/dribble "up" in tho old' way; other few thero are who come from countries not at war, or. «rhero -military service is not compul- , (j'ory or usual. One result is. that the proportion of dark-skinned undergraduis now very great instead of Wing very 'small. I askod an old collego • servant-^-What sort of men come up nowP "Mostly blacks," was the -torse reply. The dons, with little or nono of ■ their usual .work to do, have 'devoted themselves to" patriotic duties. One Balliol don is chemist to. tho Third Army, and has taught the Germans much. that they were sorry to learn about poisonous gases. , Another, m ho knows everything worth knowing about tiioso vexatious" cro&tures "tho li-any Plantajgenets" is head of-one of tho temporary departments created in shoals by the urgencies of the war. "L duo-, bus disco omnes." In the porch of tho collego chapel are displayed lists already" staggeringly long and growing weekly Jonger-of the Balliol men who haro. given their lives for their country. All colleges- share alike in this glory of service and agony of loss. Oxford is no longer a university. It is a barracks. The colleges are crowded with cadets instead of undergraduates; the place is. thick with officers instead .'of dons. In oldon days, as ctfimed a-mornings, there was a rush or 'gay, boisterous, happy men-from collego to college, as they hurried-from one. " Idbturo to another. Now the -grey old . 'streets echo to the: tramp of .the boys in' khaki, and the short, sharp, staccato commands of their officers. ino ; ' book-shops are stacked with military mipj -and text-books. The windows or the tailors' shops lack their former delirium of waistcoats, and arc sober with tunics and trench coats, garnished with swords that look very pretty here, ana, teste..the-inimitable Bairnsfatlier, wi be very nsefnl as toasting-forks m" the dftg-outs. Aeroplanes are commoner in thß sky than cabs in tho street. - So full of ardour and preparation is Oxford,- that when "one day, hearing a imurmur of talk in a college garden: J. poshed aside the drooping branches of .a spreading lime tree and saw a 8®" , gro\ib of "men" of the old sort doing; Utile old sort of . thing-, the sight struck; as- strange.and almost-incongruous. What have Aristotle's "Ethics" and Stubbs's ?'Charters" to do with a day , r/hca the Kaiser's hellishnesses things' that' count ? Tho Oxford tliat was is. tho fairest fruit on the tree of-civilisation: .The Oxford men that, aVa toot but should,have been, are over ;'therp,?' doing .their, manfullest to sea Jtliat the bastard culture of ■ Heidelbei g snd Bonn shatters before the traditions thev have inherited* yet may not share . question : naturally arises: W ill Oxford' recover when the war is ovei. 3 Old dons, old "scouts," old shopkeepers, replyin the negative. The Oxford they v knew,, the only Oxford .they can conceive, has been whisked from under r their feet by the rude hand of, war, ana Ithey.cry Ichabod, for their glory hath : departed. ■ \They are altogether too gloomy. Peace will in time repair; the ravages or war. Other generations, of freshmen (Will troop up in other Octobers; later generations of "men" will "take thoir . schools" in later Junes, and scatter to-their work, over the'wholes world. During the centuries, Oxford, had driven its roots-too doep to be torn up, ..even by *tho blast of .'Armageddon. Yet change "will come. That is cer.tahi. "And it will, I think, be a cbango, , deep and abiding, in the atmosphero of the university and in its relation to the totality'of. our. national life. If , -Oxford had a fault—and I would as •oon look ior faults in a gloire do "jWjohr— it was that up to the outbreak ■of war' its. inspiration and its uplift had practically not beon felt beyond the middle-classes. To .'.the worker, • Oxford; • *as something in which Ift was not in- . -terested. and in which ho could - not •hare. I think this -fault will be re- ,. paired after tho ./war. Wo have been i<me~ folk in the firing-lino, and Oxford . ,-dudl no longer separate ns into classes that cannot mingle. Even before the 'war a few sons of working-men went -to Oxford through the scholarship sysi myself .went up at a very adYyinced age for a. "man," and one of '.•the kpenest and brightest of my jWord, chums .was a "nuin" t>f -r- -J® 6 .normal age whom I had trained for 1 'firstscholarship in - an elementary

« C < u°' ' n a P° or quarter of London, otioh cases, though not uncommon, arc not numerous. Ho was rara avis, and I was rarissima. I want to s« r C i? 80 commo P as not to attract the slightest attention. Oxford can cont'uue to give to the sons of the wealthy its invaluable training and its enviable cachet, and yet open its mystic treasury and distribute with lavish hand to hundreds of the sons of the working men. _ T further, ;md still more important. Under no conceivablc syßtem can work-ing-men in the mass go to Oxford or Cambridge, or even to modern universities like Birmingham and Sheffield. But wdrking-men bv the thousand can be led to realise that there really is a condition of mind called "culture," which is the most. desirable gift that life bestows on man. Oxford has already done much for such men. but not until lately, and then only in small ways by the direct corporate effort of the 'university. Erasmus longed for the day when the ploughman should tread the furrow singing in his own tongue the psalms cf David. I want to see Oxford longing for and working for the day when men at the bench and women at the mill shall _ hear above the rattle of tho machinery the music of Wordsworth, and turn from tho grimv realities ty which they "live" to the divine imaginings of Plato. Then they will be better workers, keener tradeunionists, 3nd finer citizens. Let me close with an anecdote. The other day. I was standing on the raft alongside the Balliol barge, when a "four" came in from a good spin*on the river, coxed and coached by a fine oarsman. The men were keeii o n their work. Their cox was no less keen on licking them into shape. The rowers were working-men up for the summer school. Tho cos was the Master of Balliol.

I have called this an anecdote, because I , held the Master's umbrella while lie stood on the raft and gave still more coaching before we started on our walk. But it is more than &n anecdote; it is a parable. Nor, if our rulers and our workers know precisely where their real interest iies, will its teaching be unheeded, for it means—and I adapt' tho familiar words in all reverence—that the kingdom of Oxford is at hand.