Oxford and the Empire.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18235, 20 November 1924, Page 8

Oxford and the Empire.

The interest which Oxford is arousing in the Dominion to-day is not exactly "Imperial": though, the name will be in more New Zealand minds than ever before in history, it will not remain long enough there to affect the destinies of the British race. It is, however, a fact that Oxford has done more for our race than any other agency that could profitably be Compared with it, and that to the extent to which development means Empire development its influence, with one great excoption, has been supreme. It is too much to expect of the All Blacks themselves that they should have thoughts to spare for anybody or anything to-day but the weight and Bpeod and cunning of fifteen men. Perhaps it ia too much to expect any more of their million anxious admirers. But if we wish to "servo" while we "only "stand and wait" we can hardly do better than think of some of the contributions Oxford has made to the Empire from Sir Humphrey Gilbert to the latest batch of finished Rhodes scholars. Tho story is summarised by the "ViceChancellor in last month's "Empire <' Review,'' and makes extraordinarily stimulating reading. Oxford had little : or no share in the development of those principles of colonisation associated with tho name of Edward Gibbon "Wakefield. Koithor Oxford nor Gambridge made Wakefield, and it was Cambridge and not Oxford which made Charles Buller, who so largely made the fame of Lord Durham. But if we make that exception, we shall have no other of the Same importance to make in Britain's three hundred years of expansion. It waa Gilbert who first put the idea of colonisation into the English imagination, and Gilbert's half-brother, Sir "Walter Ealcigh, who first showed how the idoa could be applied; and both "came down" from Oxford. So also it was Hakluyt, Richard Hakluyt of Christ Church, who compiled the real epic of early English adventure, and Hakluyt, as "the " foremost English authority in all that " concerned the New World," was ono of the three principal members of the London Company which received King James's Chartor for tho founding of the Colony of Virginia. It is a noteworthy fact, also, that these three famous sons of Oxford preached the same doctrine of expansion of posterity preaches to-day—emigration to remedy over-population and "the sundry dis- " orders of unemployment." The Indian Empire likewise, which we may date conveniently from the Battle of Plasscy, has been peculiarly dependent

on Oxford through its 150 odd years. Of the twenty-five Governors-General between Warren Hastings and Lord Curzon twelve were Oxford men, and although there is no complete record it seems to be established that Oxford has supplied more than any other University, and almost as many as all other universities combined, of "that "great body of [lndian] public scr- " vants -whose record is the most brii- " liant part of Britain's contribution "to world history." And as with India, so with Africa. The two greatest names in the history of Africa south of the Gre3t Lakes arc those of Livingstone and Ehodes, and if the first was not an Oxford man, the second is so completely identified with Oxford for all time that New Zealanders at least can hardly think of one without the other. Then with regard to the " British Dominions beyond the seas," and beyond India and Africa, the first addition on the grand scale was due to the exploration of the great Southern Continent of Australia, and it should be remembered that it was " another " Christ Church man, Sir Joseph Banks, " President of the Royal Society for "42 years (1778-1820), who financed " and accompanied the expedition of "Captain Cook in the Endeavour."