IDOL SPECULATION

The bevy of self-appointed sociologists who make it there business to compare every phase of American education with the English system which has made the Anglo-Saxon race predominant on every playing field, battle field, and tropical trading post in the world will be hard put to it to draw a moral from the most recent news flash emanating from the Towers of Oxford. Within the week eight hundred products of the traditional college system gathered together at the office of the proctor in answer to a bogus printed notice. Coming at 9.15 in the morning this practical joke must have broken up many a hospitable breakfast party, but the Oxonians even in disillusion maintain the leisurely tradition and cheered and rollicked about for over an hour before dispersing. The attendance of the fire department and the efforts of the proctor and his "bulldogs", without which no British college seems complete, finally succeeded in persuading the crowd that they were not really needed at the office.

It is to be hoped that this exhibition of collegiatism will not go unheeded by the group of anglo-philes who point to the Oxford system as the acme of suavity, good manners, cultivation, and what you have not. The fog of rumour which floats over from across the Atlantic has too long served as a text for every critic with a fondness for adornment by generality, and arguments in favour of compulsory chapel, decentralization, more discipline and less direction have all been pinned with a wave of the hand to the cloak of obscurity which covers the Great British University. In spite of the fact that the most recent Oxford news doesn't prove much, critics may cherish it for occasions when the ointment of glorification is spread a bit too thick.