Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 86, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1902 — AMERICANS GO TO OXFORD. [ARTICLE]

AMERICANS GO TO OXFORD.

Some Students from This Country Take Conroe at England's University. The few Americans who are now to be found at Oxford and Cambridge are of two classes, says the London Speaker. There are the sons of rich men affected by a more or less aente form of Anglomania, who are often more English than the English undergraduates themselves. These may be ignored, for they will not want to participate In Mr. Rhodes’ scheme. The second class, and it Is a very small one, consists of the sons of English-born parents who have settled In America but wish to maintain English traditions. The sons themselves possibly do not, but I believe that nearly all the new scholarships will go to Americans the tradl|jons of whose families are largely English. I have never heard of a pure-bred American who came to Oxford or Cambridge merely because he thought, or his parents thought, that he could get a better education at those universities than he could at home. And 1 believe that the pure-bred American with no English ax to grind who would come to Oxford for his degree, and then go back to his own country, will be as rare when Mr. Rhodes’ scheme corifes Into effect as he is now. But, in any case, the result will be the same, for, whatever their fathers may be, American sous of English parents are as American as anybody, and they are not likely to forget their nationality when they find themselves at Oxford.

You will have, then, In Oxford, a hundred young Americans, glorying in their nationality, glorying, that is, in being unlike the other young men who now, to use a phrase, own the place. They will bring with them ideas of what university life should be -like, drawn from their knowledge of what university life is In the United States. They may be very good ideas, but they will not be the Ideas of Oxford. The Americans will form themselves into a society and will try to push those ideas, and they will not do it very quietly, for those are the ways of young Americans. The men who own the place will reslst them, very tenaciously at first, and with immense scorn and dislike. And there will probably be a good deal of trouble, which will bind the newcomer sflll more closely together. Finally, I believe that the American ideas of what a thoroughly up-to-date university should be like socially will make way, and Oxford will to some extent be Americanized.