The Rhodes Scholarships.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 11, 2 September 1907, Page 395

The Rhodes Scholarships.

The other day it was announced that one of our Rhodes scholars— Mr. J. Allan Thomson, of the School of Mines, Otago University — has been appointed lecturer in geology at St. John's College, Oxford. Mr. Thomson has been four years away from the colony, and he is in all probabih^ lost for ever to his country. This sort of thing we have no right to complain of in a case like that of Professor Rutherford who, beginning his career- in New Zealand, has long been established in Canada as the first authority of the world on the subject of that extraordinary metal, radium. Mr. Rutherford found his own way to fame, and presumably, at least so we hope, to fortune. On the other hand the Rhodes scholarships were given to help persons, whether residents of Britain or of any part of the Empire, or of any foreign country, to improve their own countries by improving themselves, with the ulterior object of giving them, by showing them the world, cosmopolitan ideas, which make for the brotherhood of mankind and the peace of nations. It was a large-hearted magnificent bequest that Rhodes left behind him. But the practice of students going away and taking service in other countries, and so depriving their own of the advantages obtained through the bequest, is not the proper method of carrying out Rhodes's true intent. The trustees ought to be appealed to, and can be with effect, as their powers are very large.