CHAPTER III
FROM PROVISION TO PRACTICE, 1902-1906
THE MEASURES AND STEPS BY WHICH THE SCHOLARSHIP SYSTEM HAS BEEN ORGANIZED
Cecil Rhodes had no idea that his Will was a perfect document. He well realized the difficulty and the complexity of the problem of organizing and putting in practice the Scholarship system for which he was providing; and with clear foresight he made the will elastic, leaving to his Trustees and their agents the development of details.
He had always in life expressed a rare confidence in the Anglo-Saxon race. His Will bears witness to the confidence which he placed in the training capacity of the oldest seat of Anglo-Saxon learning, in the skill and public spirit of his Trustees, and in the assimilative capacities of a cosmopolitan group of students of Anglo-Saxon stock whom he meant to draw together.
The first step for the Trustees was to secure agents who should have personal supervision of the task of organizing and engineering the machinery by which Rhodes Scholars should be selected, introduced to Oxford, and instructed, advised, and guided in the various intricacies of what, to most of them, would prove an altogether new system. Dr. George R. Parkin, LL.D., G.M.G., was called from his position as President of Upper Canada College, Toronto, and accepted and undertook the task of ‘world agent’, so to speak, of the Rhodes Trust. His wide experience in educational work, his knowledge of Oxford as an Oxford student, and his intimate knowledge of the parts of the British Empire and of the English speaking world eminently fitted Dr. Parkin for the position which he assumed.
Mr. Francis J. Wylie, M. A., a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, was chosen to fill an executive and diplomatic position as the Oxford representative of the Trustees, a position which makes him at once the negotiator between the Trust and the University, and, until the Scholars’ applications for College entrance are adjusted and accepted, between the Scholars and the University and Colleges.
To Dr. Parkin was entrusted the making of the necessary arrangements with Oxford, and the construction of a system for selecting and appointing Scholars. Negotiations with the University and with the Colleges found all the Colleges willing to accept Rhodes Scholars, although their requirements varied somewhat. The Trustees found it advisable to require that only men who showed ability to pass Responsions[17] should be eligible.
Entrance to an Oxford College is not as simple a matter as entering most Colleges or Universities in the United States, Germany, the British Colonies or even other Universities in the United Kingdom.
The handling of an endless variety of questions which would naturally arise in this connexion, negotiations between the appointed Scholars and Oxford, and the adjustment of individual difficulties at Oxford became, as they continue to be, the charge of Mr. Wylie.
Dr. Parkin was then able to set out on what became a one-hundred-thousand-mile trip to the ‘ends of the earth’, to approach the authorities in the centres from which Rhodes Scholars were to be drawn. It was his mission to deal with ever-varying local conditions, and establish in each centre an appointive system which would at once satisfy the requirements of the Will, the requirements of the University, and the circumstances of the local educational (and sometimes political) régimes. Only through the elasticity of the Will, which gave discretionary powers to the Trustees, and through which they, in turn, allowed Dr. Parkin to deal with local conditions, was the success of these negotiations made possible.
Of this unique trip of organization Dr. Parkin says:—