i6 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. 1 



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 strength 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 



1 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 ! 



