Rhodes Scholars
IF Cecil John Rhodes is remembered at all a century from now, it will not be for the imperial domain that he carved out in South Africa, but for the Oxford scholarships that bear his name. His methods were a little too energetic for modern tastes, but Rhodes did more than any other man has done in our times to paint British red on the map of the world.
Heart disease killed him in 1902, while the British were having a difficult time with the Boer Commandos. And Rhodes, who had never found time to marry while he was cornering the diamond mines of Kimberley and the gold mines of the Rand, left his entire fortune for the purpose of strengthening the British Empire and its links with the United States and with Germany (an afterthought).
Some two thousand young men from the ends of the earth have since profited from Rhodes’s generosity, but it must be conceded that the scholarships are a rather tame ending to the career of the “great Elizabethan” (it was Barrie’s phrase), who in other days might have founded a kingdom of his own. And it is likely that Rhodes, who loved a fight, would rejoice like a war horse at the sound of battle if he were alive to challenge the Chicago Tribune’s current campaign against the Rhodes Scholars.
These attacks are a sign that the Americans whom his money sent to Oxford are at last accomplishing something, even though the judgment is delivered by their crities. And t his is at least preferable to the contemptuous verdict that most writers, from Max Beerbohm down to Milton MacKaye, have been pronouncing upon the Rhodes men since the first contingent arrived in Oxford back in 1904.
What if the Tribune does demand that not only all former Rhodes Scholars, but all Americans who have unpatriotically attended a foreign university, be fingerprinted? After all, Rhodes’s private chartered company in its day had made its own treaties and fought its own war. The disciples of Rhodes ought to be a match for Colonel McCormick. Certainly Rhodes would have been.
There is scarcely an American community of any size that has not furnished at least one scholar to Oxford, and it is common knowledge that these — perhaps it is just as well — are not of the stuff from which empire-builders are made. Seldom do the sons of self-made millionaires display the rugged energy that won fortunes for their parents, and the Rhodes Scholars, who likewise have enjoyed a very expensive education, until now have seemed to run true to their borrowed form.
Rhodes, with the imperial mission on his mind from the time he made his first will at the age of twenty-four, did everything he could to make sure that his scholars were doers as well as hearers of the word. Neither a scholar nor an athlete, he specified that his scholars should be both, and that they should display qualities of character and leadership as well. By the time a world-wide organization had been set up to administer the scholarships, this had all been worked out on a mathematical basis — so much for scholarship, so much for athletics, and so forth.
One may note Rhodes’s direction that any residue from his fortune should be spent on agents in the British Empire who would “be above all things imperial, in fact, make the imperial idea paramount.” And the dying bachelor added that these “would be better unmarried, as the considerations of babies and other domestic agenda generally destroy higher thought.”
The fortune t hat Rhodes left was one of the greatest of his day. At his death it yielded an income of £1,000,000, which since has increased to £2,000,000 a year. This made possible scholarships on a scale unknown in history: 60-odd for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other members of the British Empire; 15 for Germany; and 96 (two from each state in the Union) for the United States. A well-authenticated story says that Rhodes and his lawyer both thought that the United States was still composed of the thirteen original colonies, and they did not realize that they were giving America more than, the Empire and Germany combined.
As the scholarships were originally fixed for three years, this meant that thirty-two states held elections each year, scholarships being restricted to unmarried men between nineteen and twenty-five. The annual stipend, originally £250, finally was raised to £400, a princely sum which enabled scholars to support themselves without outside help, and even, if money from their families was available, made possible life on a grand scale.
From 1904 until 1939, when selections were suspended (with the advent of war, our Neutrality Act forbade American citizens to travel into belligerent zones), 1126 Americans were appointed to the scholarships. The formula in the early days was very rigid: 30 per cent for “literary and scholastic attainments”; 30 per cent for “fondness for and success in manly outdoor sports such as cricket, football and the like”; 30 per cent for “qualities of manhood, truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship”; 20 per cent for “exhibition during school days of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in his schoolmates.”
Rhodes no doubt believed these attributes would be desirable in his scholars, but he appears to have been quite skeptical about the type of men who would possess them in just this proportion. In a fit of cynicism during his last days he told W. T. Stead that they really were the qualities of “smugness, brutality, unctuous rectitude, and tact.” And the attempt of his selection committees to follow his specifications sometimes produced strange and wonderful results. Though it may be possible for one person to have all these virtues and a supple and elastic mind as well, relatively few such persons turned up at Oxford.
The climax was reached in 1928, when a certain Rhodes Scholar who had played on his college football team, made Phi Beta Kappa, and been elected president of the college Y.M.C.A. arrived bearing the sobriquet of “The Perfect Man.’ The unfortunate fellow had been thus christened by his home-town paper, and as word of this reached Oxford before him, he was the darling of many a breakfast and tea party until the English had had their fill at a shilling a look.
Perhaps as a result of the ridicule caused by this incident, the Rhodes Trustees soon afterwards began to urge the selection committees not to try too hard for “well-rounded” scholars. This changed policy was the easier to carry out because the system of written examinations, which was employed in the early years, had already been abandoned; selection committees relied more and more upon their personal sizing-up of the candidates. By this time, moreover, enough old Rhodes Scholars, with an intimate knowledge of the type of man who could benefit from a stay at Oxford, were available to serve on the committees.
Another change, which was in even flatter contradiction of Rhodes’s will, also is responsible for the fact that fewer campus heroes have been sent to Oxford in recent years. Rhodes’s will had specified that each state should have two scholarships. But it was obvious that while such states as New York or Massachusetts would always provide enough candidates of scholarship caliber, those less advanced or less densely populated would not always have suitable material. Committees were instructed therefore to make no selection unless suitable candidates were available — the vacant scholarship being awarded to a close runner-up elsewhere — but local pride of course made it difficult for committees to reject all candidates, and these vacancies did not often occur.
In 1929, therefore, the Rhodes Trustees persuaded the British Parliament to set aside this provision of Rhodes’s will and divide the United States into eight districts of six states each, each district having the right to make four selections a year. The new policy aroused some protests among states-right s-minded Rhodes men, but on the whole has met with general approval. It is perhaps too early, however, to say whether any great improvement in the quality of Rhodes Scholars has resulted.
Another change ordered by the Trustees at about the same time limited the duration of the scholarships to two years unless there was some convincing reason for a third year. Englishmen, after leaving public school or grammar school, usually spend three years at Oxford; and Rhodes — if he gave the matter any thought — may have intended his American scholars to go to Oxford from high school. However, the age requirement in practice limited the American scholarships to college graduates, and it was found after a time that most of these were able to take whatever additional degree they wanted from Oxford in two years.
As might be expected, the impact of Oxford upon more or less callow Phi Beta Kappa’s has been tremendous. After years of dutifully getting their lessons every night, they were free, for a while at least, to do what they chose. A few, particularly those sent over during t he prohibition era, embarked upon a commendable attempt to save the English from drink by consuming extra-large quantities themselves. Others were intoxicated more by the unaccustomed luxury of Oxford, with “scouts” to serve their meals in their suites of rooms, and shopkeepers who displayed a novel deference. And every Rhodes Scholar was exhilarated by the freedom with which dons and undergraduates discussed any subject under the sun without regard to the prejudices that are accepted without question in some parts of the United States.
Perhaps even more suspicious, from the point of view of the Hearst-McCormick combine, is the fact that the Rhodes Scholars also developed a real interest, in international affairs. They are not, of course, the only Americans who have ever traveled; hundreds of t housands of college students, schoolteachers, and the well-to-do used to sail for Europe every summer. But these went mostly on Cook’s tours of one kind or another, roaring over most of the Continent in five or six weeks. The Rhodes Scholars, however, had an opportunity during the long Oxford vacations — undergraduates are in residence at Oxford only twenty-four weeks out of the year — to settle down and really learn something about Grenoble or the Black Forest or the islands of the Aegean. England remained for many of them a depressing country, with bad food and an execrable climate, but they gave their hearts to Europe; few returned to the United States without a smattering, at least, of one or more foreign languages and a corresponding interest in the people who spoke them.
That was the general experience, although some, to be sure, ended their scholarships with a cordial dislike of England or Europe or both. Back in 1924, for instance, a Rhodes Scholar shocked the Trustees and others gathered at the farewell dinner by declaring that “Oxford and England have only made us love America more.” And he went on to say that “we are sick of handshaking across the seas; some day, perhaps, some of us will amount to something, if the life of idleness has not become too strong.”
Unless the American public meanwhile is convinced that the Rhodes scholarships are a Bad Thing, the doors of Oxford will swing open after the war to another batch of well-rounded Phi Beta Kappa’s. Whether they will be more susceptible than their predecessors to the blandishments of an education for nothing is a matter that is more dependent on the state of American public opinion than anything that Rhodes dreamed or plotted half a century ago. The chances are, however, that much the same types of American students will go over, and that they will return with more knowledge and understanding of Europe than most of their countrymen possess.
If this be treason, then somebody should speak severely to Elmer Davis, Representative William Fulbright, and the 200 other Rhodes men who are serving the American government in wartime. Not to mention the 250 (there are 350 of military age) who are members of the armed forces of the United States.
