Abstract
AT Oxford last week the second congress of the Universities of the Empire was held under perfect conditions as to weather and public and private hospitality. The large and distinguished assembly which forgathered in the examination halls on four successive days was drawn from fifty-nine universities widely separated geographically, but inspired by the same ideals and working for the same increasing purpose. This number, it may be observed, has not grown markedly since 1912, when the first congress was held in London; but those who were privileged to attend both congresses must have been impressed by the different conditions, moral and economic, which have arisen during the intervening nine years. Lord Rosebery, in his opening address to the first congress, spoke with eloquence and prevision on the throes of travail which the world was at that time undergoing to produce something new to history— “something, perhaps, better than anything we have yet known, which it may take long to perfect or to achieve, but which at any rate means a new evolution.” Two years later the thunderclap of war burst over the world. Evolution ceded place to a process more catastrophic in both its physical and its spiritual workings. May it not be said that the universities, stunned and hesitating, are still groping their way in the new world which is in slow and tentative formation?
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Congress of Universities. Nature 107, 610–612 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107610a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107610a0