October 7, 1909J 



NA TURE 



445 



at least among my audience. It is Iieaded " International 

 Interchange of Students — a New Movement." 



" We have received," says the Times, " the following 

 interesting particulars of a new educational movement to 

 provide for the interchange of University students among 

 the English-speaking peoples. 



" The object is to provide opportunities for as many 

 as possible of the educated youth of the United Kingdom, 

 Canada, and the United States (who, it is reasonable to 

 suppose, will become leaders in thought, action, civic and 

 national government in the future) to obtain some real 

 insight into the life, customs, and progress of other 

 nations at a time when their own opinions are forming, 

 with a minintum of inconvenience to their academic work 

 and the least possible expense, with a view to broadening 

 their conceptions and rendering them of greater economic 

 and social value, such knowledge being, it is believed, 

 essential for effectual leadership. 



" The additional objects of the movement are to increase 

 the value and efficiency of, as well as to extend, present 

 University training by the provision of certain Travelling 

 Scholarships for practical observation in other countries 

 under suitable guidance. These scholarships will enable 

 those students to benefit who might otherwise be unable 

 to do so through financial restrictions. It also enables 

 the administration to exercise greater power of direction 

 in the form the travel is to take. In addition to academic 

 qualifications, the selected candidate should be what is 

 popularly known as an ' all-round ' man ; the selection 

 to be along the lines of the Rhodes Scholarships. 



" The further objects are to extend the influence of such 

 education indirectly among the men who are not selected 

 as scholars (through intercourse with those who have 

 travelled) by systematic arrangements of the periods' 

 eligibility while they are still undergraduates. 



" To promote interest in imperial, international, and 

 ■domestic relations, civic and social problems, and to foster 

 a mutual sympathy and understanding imperially and 

 inlernntionally among students. 



" To afford technical and industrial students facilities 

 to examine into questions of particular interest to them 

 in manufactures, &c., by observation in other countries 

 and by providing them with introductions to leaders in 

 industrial activity. 



" To promote interest in travel as an educational factor 

 among the authorities of Universities, with a view to the 

 possibilitv of some kind of such training being included in 

 the regular curricula. 



" To promote interest in other Universities, their aims 

 and student life, the compulsory physical training, and 

 methods of working their ways through college, for 

 example, being valuable points for investigation. 



" To promote international interchange for academic 

 work among English-speaking Universities ; and, in the 

 case of the I3ritish Empire, to afford facilities for students 

 of one division to gain, under favourable circumstances, 

 information relative to the needs, development, and 

 potentialities of other divisions ; and to promote an 

 academic interchange of students among the Universities 

 •of the Empire. 



" As already indicated, there is a widespread interest 

 in the movements so far as the United Kingdom is con- 

 cerned ; while in Canada and the United States there is 

 also a widespread recognition of the value of the scheme ; 

 and although committees have not been actually organised 

 there as in this country, a very large body of the most 

 prominent educationists are strongly in favour of the plan, 

 and have promised their co-operation if the scheme is 

 financed. 



" It is proposed to establish two students' travelling 

 "bureaux, one in New York and one in London ; an 

 American secretary (resident in New York) and a British 

 secretary (resident in London), both of whom shall be 

 <:ollege men appointed to afford every facility to any 

 graduate or undergraduate of any University who wishes 

 to visit the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom 

 for the purpose of obtaining an insight into the student, 

 national, and industrial life of those countries. The 

 bureaux will undertake the work of providing information 

 relating to United States. Canadian, British, and other 



NO. 2084, VOL. St] 



English-speaking Universities for the use of students, 

 undergraduates, and others. They will also provide in- 

 formation relating to educational tours of any description 

 in English-speaking countries, and the arrangement ^ of 

 tours suitable to the needs of the inquirer with a view 

 to his obtaining the greatest facilities for education with 

 a minimum of expense. Furthermore it will be their duty 

 to provide information as to the best places for the study 

 of educational, governmental, industrial, and social 

 problems in the United States, Canada, the United King- 

 dom, and other parts of the Empire, as well as to provide 

 introductions to leaders in the above-named spheres of 

 activity, besides undertaking the organisation and conduct 

 of special tours for educational purposes, if necessary. 



" It is proposed to provide 28 travelling scholarships, 

 14 of these being available for Universities in the United 

 Kingdom, 10 for Universities in America, and four for 

 Universities in Canada. The arrangements will be con- 

 trolled by general committees, one for the United Kingdom 

 and one for Canada and the United States, unless it is 

 found necessary to inaugurate a separate committee for 

 each of the latter." 



You will observe, then, that a scheme which I had 

 ventured to suggest as being " of incalculable advantage 

 to the Empire " had. before I wrote the words quoted, 

 been advocated entirely without my knowledge by a body 

 of influential educational leaders in England, whose names 

 were appended to the notice which I have read ; and I 

 need only add that it is quite certain that I am interpret- 

 ing the sentiments of all here assembled in wishing God- 

 speed to the development of the scheme, which seems 

 likely to prove, if carried into effect, a great, if not the 

 greatest, educational factor of Imperialism. 



But it may be objected here, Is not your own horizon 

 circumscribed? Why should educational ideals be limited, 

 even by so extended a conception as Imperialism? Should 

 not the ultimate aim of all education be, not the federa- 

 tion of one race only, but the federation of the world 

 at large — the brotherhood of man? 



I am not concerned to deny that such a lofty conception 

 is the true end of all physical, moral, and mental train- 

 ing. 



But if the master mind of a Milton waF; content to 

 define true education to be " that which fits a man to 

 perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, 

 both public and private, of peace and war," it may well 

 suffice us if we extend our (at present) too narrow con- 

 ceptions (the aim of which seems to be the cultivation of 

 a mere island patriotism) to a sphere which has for its 

 end the imperialistic sentiment of a whole race. 



It may, indeed, be well doubted whether a race-senti- 

 ment is not an ultimate factor beyond which it is impossible 

 in an imperfect world to go. Universal philanthropy in 

 its most catholic sense is a sentiment which the limited 

 conditions of the earth's surface seem to render impossible. 

 So long as men's ambitions are an unlimited quantity, 

 and so long as the habitable globe remains, as it ever 

 must remain, a limited quantity, so long will the popula- 

 tions of the world be continually liable to shifting move- 

 ments and frequent dislocations. Practical educationists, 

 then, must inevitably confine the scientific consideration 

 of aims and methods in education to the development of 

 the highest interests of their race rather than of mankind 

 at large. 



And that being so, the last point on which 1 would 

 insist in dealing with the educational factors of Imperialism 

 is to emphasise the importance of what the educationists 

 of the United States call " civics " as the binding power 

 which should fasten together all the separate educational 

 faggots in any Imperial scheme of education — the duty 

 of personal service to the State, the positive obligation 

 which makes us all members incorporate in one Imperial 

 system. In our love of individual freedom, in our jealousy 

 of interference with our individual liberty of action, in 

 our insular disregard and depreciation of intellectual forces 

 working in our sister com.munities beyond the seas, we 

 have lost sight of this civic responsibility which has ever 

 lain on our shoulders and from which we can never dis- 

 sociate ourselves, so long as our Empire remains as part 

 of our ancestral heritage. 



