364 Extracts from Addresses
large number. And, of course, the standard of the degree, as Sir
Henry Jones has pointed out, is going to be very high. But we can
hope for a much larger number of students coming, because they want
to study under some particular teacher, because they want to become
familiar with our universities, and above all because they want to be-
come familiar with English life.
Now let us take one or two particular instances. Say a student in
America was graduated in America, and is studying in some graduate
school of a university in America the subject of English literature or
the subject of English history. Now he soon begins to feel that he is
placed at a great disadvantage as compared with a student in our own
country, in that he knows nothing at first hand about English life. He
has never seen an English village. Possibly he has never seen the sea.
He has never seen the field walks of our countryside. He has never seen
our woodlands. Therefore a great deal of our poetry, for instance, is
unintelligible to him. He cannot feel its appeal. And similarly in the
study of English history no one can understand what English history
means who does not know English life. No one can understand the
forces that have moulded English character in the past, who does not
understand the English countryside. You remember John Bright’s
famous saying: “A nation lives in its cottages.” I venture to add to
that that in the past the British nation has lived in its country cottages.
If you want to understand English life you must learn what the passing
visitor to the country never learns, of the life in an English country
house, the life in an English parsonage, the life in an English farm-
house, of the life in an English cottage in a country village. Then of
course there are our libraries. The student of our history and our
literature will find in our libraries a great deal that he cannot find even
in your splendid libraries in America.
Now, I hope I have made that plain, that what we contemplate, what
we hope for, is that students from this country will come to our
universities not merely to get a degree which we have to offer. We
hope that in the great majority of cases those who come to us for
advanced work will be looking forward to a degree in their own uni-
versity over here, either coming to us for a year to study under some
particular teacher, or to avail themselves of some particular library. But
when we speak of an interchange of students, of course, we are not
thinking of a one-sided business. Now that has been the defect in the
scheme established by Mr. Rhodes. I am one of those that venture to
think that is a great success, and it will be a much greater success in
the future than it has been in the past, on account of the war, but
that scheme of course only means that students from America come