The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1930 SWAPPING STUDENTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1054, 19 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1930 SWAPPING STUDENTS

AS a modest beginning of a good and promising scheme of international co-operation in higher education Germany lias expressed a desire to exchange with the New Zealand University a graduate student for the short period of an academic year. The request, was passer! on to the Council of the Auckland University College yesterday and given sympathetic preliminary consideration. Although the spirit of the local university authorities was willing, it. was explained that their resources were weak. The Auckland College, like its three neighbours in other centres, does not possess the facilities for providing reciprocal terms to a German student. And there was reference made almost with a touch of sadness that the cost of reciprocity on Auckland’s side would he £2OO a year. One of: the dreams of the late Cecil Rhodes in providing a generous fund for its fulfilment was that the scholarships which commemorate liis name and clear vision would aid the intellectual co-operation of students from the British Empire, the United States of America and Germany. It was the belief of the famous South African millionaire that, if educated young men could be brought together to Oxford and made to share a distinctive college life, “they would obtain a breadth of view, a sense of civic duty, and a gift of intellectual tolerance which in time would exercise its influence upon the public relations of the communities to which they belonged.” Unfortunately the World War intervened rudely and its motives and results, as far as Germany was concerned, have been accepted by many people as proof that Rhodes’s dream was shattered. This, however, is not the view now taken hv the Rhodes Trustees who, at the annual dinner given recently to Rhodes Scholars in England, expressed their belief that, within the measure of those scholars’ influence, necessarily restricted, the German scholarships were valuable as enabling some of the best young men in the British Empire and Germany to make friendships one with another. Also the trustees gave it as their opinion that, had a longer period of time been permitted, the scholarships might have had something of the influence which Mr. Rhodes desired to see. There need he no argument about that now; the war is over and done with, and Germany again takes its place in a world pledged to maintain iieace and goodwill—a pledge which, of course, may yet prove among members of the League of Nations and the signatories to the pact for outlawing war to have been more pious than practicable. Indeed, France today is in a flurry of excitement over the publication of a hook by General von Seeckt, Chief of Staff of the German Army, in which the sabrerattler outlines plans for the next war against the alert and sensitive Republic across the Rhine. If there should he anything sinister in or behind such provocative war talk, then there obviously is all the greater need of intellectual co-operation for the promotion of that breadth of view, sense of civic duty and the gift of tolerance which once filled the mind of Mr. Rhodes. Altogether apart from the possibility of war, the needs of a changed world demand an exchange of ideas and a wide practice of intellectual reciprocity. Business alone calls for a ready and a full exercise of these aids to understanding and peace. One of the outstanding defects of university education throughout the British Empire is the neglect of modern languages. It has hgen said that, in this respect, the English schools are worse than any in Europe. - British Islanders and the majority of their kinsmen in all the Dominions are born with an inherent contempt for the tongues of foreigners. And even when they know foreign languages most of them generally are incapable of imparting their knowledge to others. Few of the educated youth of the British Empire have attained even a reading acquaintance with any of the current European languages. Yet ability to read or write a foreign letter correctly would be an extraordinarily valuable commercial asset to bright young men looking for a lucrative job in Empire frade and commerce. Swap one student with Germany? There is necessity for exchanging a hundred students every year.