Oxford's Appeal The future of Oxford as a seat of
learning very largely depends on the response to the appeal made by the University this week for financial assistance in undertaking certain new projects which can no longer be postponed. The first, of course, is the building of the new Bodleian Library, for which the University requires £250,000 ; hardly less urgent is the need for funds to endow research in the humane studies and the social and natural sciences, and for the building of institutes, museums and laboratories. The cost of these undertakings is well over £500,000 : the University's income, from its own assets, is L19,000. The wealth of Oxford is in the colleges, which are also the home of the tutorial system which is Oxford's pride but may become its ruin ; the increase in advanced studies, in specialised teaching, and in the number of students, make it necessary that more time and more facilities should be given to the research work on which the standard of teaching depends. Without it, the tutor is in danger of becoming a mere hack. It is to be hoped that this appeal will bring the University endowments as generous as those which in the past have been given to the colleges and adequate to its great position in the world of scholarship.
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