16 THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 
nance in the academic world towards those studies which are 
most closely related to the practical arts. 
Looking at universities merely as seats of learning, I can 
see nothing but mutual advantage in their contact with great 
towns, and I look confidently to this close association for the 
destruction of a barrier that has been both artificial and 
mischievous." 
It may be thought, perhaps, that I have insisted too much 
on the part which science has played, and is to play in our 
new universities. I cannot deny that, in my opinion, science 
has been their mainstay and that it will continue to be so for 
some time to come. Nor do I deny that the sympathy and 
support we have received have been based to a large extent 
on the just belief that our work may minister to the success 
of industry. But I am happy to say, and I say it most 
emphatically, that if the sole purpose of our new universities 
were to make industry and commerce more effective instru- 
ments of either personal or national wealth, you might indeed 
find men to staff them, but you would not find men 
who were worthy of their hire, and you would have | 
nothing that had a just claim to the title of a university. 
No, the sacred fire must burn, and the stréngth of our 
position is that, as has been demonstrated over and over 
again, it is the highest science, the most disinterested 
study, which are the most productive even in the narrow 
sense. We switch on our electric light, we speed along in our 
electric trams, we flash our electric signals through space and 
we bless the names of Edison, Marconi, and a host of other 
* At the same time I greatly deprecate the use of the term ‘civic 
university’. Universities should surely be cosmopolitan, and not parochial 
undertakings, like waterworks, for the supply of a merely local need. It 
is this attempt to play up to local patriotism which gives the new London; 
‘Charlottenburg’ some excuse for arrogating to itself peculiar ‘ Imperial ’ 
functions. I am thankful to say that the University of Leeds is limited 
neither in fact nor intention to the British Empire! 
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