THE MODERN UNIVERSITY MOVEMENT 21 



I regret most truly the ugliness of our surroundings, I regret 

 that the young people who come to us cannot breathe 

 unpolluted air, have their bumping races on the river, and 

 wander in the pleasant woods and meadows that should 

 surround Kirkstall Abbey. But we cannot have everything 

 at least at present. We have more than many people know 

 of, and shall get more than many people expect. 



The question has been raised as to whether our non-collegiate 

 system of life (for our halls of residence are in their infancy), 

 the absence of the kind of supervision which prevails in 

 Oxford and Cambridge, and, above all, the proximity of 

 a large city, where vice in many garbs strides flaunting 

 through the streets whether these things do not bring to our 

 students risks that are vastly greater than those that attend 

 life in the older universities. I cannot pretend to say with 

 certainty. The new universities are of course mainly non- 

 resident in character, and must long continue to be so. There 

 is, however, a continual growth in the number of students 

 coming from a distance. In Manchester, two prosperous 

 residential halls, not very different in their regime from the 

 colleges of the old universities, are already in existence. We 

 have three smaller ones in Leeds, and I think there can be no 

 doubt that these halls will increase in number and eventually 

 contain a very large section of the student community, 

 including, be it said, those who are poor in this world's goods. 

 Of their importance there can be no doubt, and whilst we lack 

 them we are defective in what many people will consider 

 perhaps the most indispensable component of a university. 



Meanwhile we suffer from the absence of what is of infinite 

 value, or what may be of infinite value, in making our 

 universities a training ground for character, and we .cannot 

 pretend that at present the impress made by three or four 

 years of our university life is in kind or degree all that we 

 could wish. Some merits in this respect we certainly have. 



