Education: Oxford Appeal

¶ The King Beech at Long Lythe, Selborne, Hampshire, so called because it is the first in that lovely countryside to leaf each spring, must be cared for by the foresters of Magdalen College, Oxford. On that traditional understanding Magdalen holds manorial rights to many a Long Lythe acre.

¶ Each year the masters of Merton College, Oxford, dispatch from the Hythe police station in rural Kent the Hythe Tithe Expeditionary Force, whose duty is to collect for Merton from each farm one-tenth of its harvested crops, one-tenth of its yearly litter of hogs, sheep, cows and chickens.

Largely by such means is Oxford University endowed. Most Americans think of Oxford, fattened by the benefactions of seven centuries, as a rich university. In fact Oxford is a loose bundle of colleges, many comfortably rich by 18th-Century standards, but despite the old paintings and priceless silver only modestly well off for the 20th. Each college houses its own members and turns over to the University a substantial part of its income in return for instruction and administration. Since 1925 about a third of the cost of running Oxford has had to be met by Parliament. In 1935 Oxford University spent altogether some $1,290,000, roughly one-tenth of what was spent by Harvard. Oxford's income from its general endowment funds was $95,000, compared to the interest reaped each year by Harvard's $134,000,000 endowment.

Old stones gather moss but moss will not endow new professorships, laboratories, research projects. In the things that only money can buy, Oxford has fallen woefully behind. Five years ago the then Chancellor of Oxford, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, led in the formation of an Oxford Society with practical aims identical to those of a U. S. alumni association. Not until last month, however, did Oxford stretch out its ancient hand in an actual Oxford Appeal for funds. Last week, in a transatlantic broadcast, "Great Tom" of Christ Church solemnly tolled and the University's Chancellor, Lord Halifax, extended a feeler on "Oxford as an Institution" to the U. S.

The appeal is for $2,500,000 for purposes "other than medical research." That has been amply taken care of by open-handed Lord Nuffield, the most princely Oxford benefactor since William of Wykeham or Henry VIII. Lord Nuffield, who used to run a cycle shop for undergraduates on the High and whose Morris motorcar works in nearby Cowley now make outlying Oxford town resemble a small Detroit, startled Oxford recently by handing over $10,000,000 to realize Sir Farquhar Buzzard's dream of a university medical centre (TIME, Jan. 4). It was also Lord Nuffield who started off the Oxford Appeal in Britain with $500,000. The Cecil Rhodes Trustees promptly pledged another $500,000.