AMERICANS SUCCEED AT OXFORD

The annual report of the Rhodes scholarship trust, which has just been issued, contains a statement giving the young American Rhodes scholars at Oxford credit for filling well an important place in the life and work of the ancient university. There are 175 scholarship holders, about one-fourteenth of the whole student body, a number that offers abundant opportunity for influence on both sides.

The report grants that it is difficult to appraise relative merit, but concedes that the Rhodes men are standing the test of Oxford competition well in all studies, except the classics. Last year they took five out of the seven first honors in jurisprudence. They won nine university prizes, some of them of great importance--the Gladstone memorial prize, the Mathew Arnold prize for an English essay, the Oldham prize for a classical essay, and the Beit prize in colonial history.

The 1913 prizes and honors won by Rhodes men last year were more numerous than in any earlier year. An American also won last year, for the first time, the presidency of the Union, the highest undergraduate office. In athletics they are conspicuous. In the Oxford competition with Cambridge last year five Americans were on the track team.

Finally, the report sets at rest a fear that some felt when the scholarships were established. Of the 431 Rhodes scholars who have finished their studies, only eleven have gone to work in England and most of these only as a temporary arrangement. The remainder have returned home, 144 to pursue education professionally, 113 law, 47 government service, 25 medicine, 18 business, 18 ministry, and others journalism, scientific work and farming.