Rhodes Scholar Potency

The U. S. scholars whom Cecil Rhodes, diamond miner, endowed with three-year scholarships at Oxford University, were last week brought upon the black & white carpet of the U. S. press. There are some 550 of them living today of the 608 who have gone to and returned from Oxford since 1904. A question about them had been raised by Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher, warden of New College, Oxford, lately Government education minister and for many years a trustee of the Rhodes Fund. The question had been relayed by Professor J. C. Beaty, traveling fellow of Columbia University, after an interview with Mr. Fisher. The question seemed to be: Are Rhodes Scholars now "running the country" (i. e. the U. S.), as Cecil Rhodes hoped they would?

Mr. Fisher, who thus phrased Mr. Rhodes' hope, did not believe that the Rhodes Scholars were "running" the U. S. He could, in fact, think of only one internationally known Rhodes Scholar--President Frank J. Aydelotte of Swarthmore (Pa.) College, U. S. secretary of the Rhodes Fund.

Cudgels were picked up variously by U. S. commentators. Some cried, in effect: What about Author Christopher Morley? What about David R. Porter, international secretary of the Y. M. C. A.? What about C. H. Foster, long U. S. Consul at Vienna? And Charles D. Mahaffie, director of Bureau of Finance of the Interstate Commerce Commission? And John James Tigert himself, U. S. Commissioner of Education? These and many another Rhodes Scholar are as well known as able President Aydelotte, or should be. Rhodes Scholars have distinguished themselves right and left--unless "running the country" be taken to mean the somewhat vulgar occupation of politics.

On the other hand came carpers maintaining that Rhodes Scholars come home scornful of U. S. culture; aloof, superior, spoiled, affected. They misrepresent the U. S. at Oxford and misprize it at home. Lately they have been criticized by Englishmen, and justly, for clubbing together at Oxford, avoiding the very contacts they are supposed to enjoy, injecting into the Oxford atmosphere an undesirable element, especially in competitive athletics, where they monopolize the play and attention, etc.

But more sober critics returned to the facts. They could, in the first place, discover no clause in Cecil Rhodes' bequest to suggest that he hoped his U. S. beneficiaries would some day be "running the country."

They discovered that he had expressed a hope that the Scholars might be sent abroad "without withdrawing them, or their sympathies, from the land of their adoption or birth." Figures fulfilled this hope: of the 550 living Scholars, only about 30 are expatriates.

Of all 608 Scholars, 243 or 40% went into teaching and 161 or 26.5% went into law, In these professions they have become, with few exceptions, eminent and hence influential. Moreover, the earliest of the Scholars are now men around 45 years of age. Their eminence, their influence, may not yet be judged with anything like finality.