Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite. Thomas J. Schaeper
(Baton Rouge, 1985), 47, 48; Alumni Magazine, 6 (April 1913): 36; TAO, 14 (1927): 19, 37 (1950): 18–21, 65 (1978): 110.
28. Alumni Magazine, 1 (December 1907): 12; 2 (January 1909): 5–6.
29. Young and Core, Selected Letters, 47, 48.
30. Alumni Magazine, 3 (January 1910): 1; TAO, 1 (1914): 18, 2 (1915): 40; 68 (1981): 159-62; Young and Core, Selected Letters, 35–36; Aydelotte, American Rhodes Scholarships, 61.
31. Parkin, Rhodes Scholarships, 201; Elton, First Fifty Years, 89–90.
32. Quoted in TAO, 68 (1981): 161.
33. NYT, 2 October 1910, 12; 11 October 1910, 4; 16 October 1910, sec. 5, 9.
34. Jeffrey C. Stewart, “A Biography of Alain Locke” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1979), 105–7.
35. Elton, First Fifty Years, 99–100.
36. Leonard Harris, ed., The Philosophy of Alain Locke (Philadelphia, 1989), 294.
37. TAO, 66 (1979); 125; Stewart, “Biography,” 111–13.
38. Stewart, “Biography,” 142.
39. Stewart, “A Biography,” 122.
40. Alain Locke, Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race, ed. Jeffrey C. Stewart (Washington, DC, 1992), xxxvii, 29, and passim.
41. Alain Locke, “Oxford: By a Negro Student,” Colored American Magazine, 17 (1909): 190. (Reprinted from Independent.)
42. TAO, 41 (1954): 258–59.
THE SCHOLAR-ATHLETES
[An American Rhodes Scholar] has been reading for honours, and I [could] never wish for a more satisfactory pupil. His essays were always thorough, thoughtful, and well expressed. His work showed a rare combination of originality and ingenuity with sound judgment and common sense. In college life he was a strong influence, and always for good. Taking him all round, we have had no better man in college since he has been with us, and few as good.
Oxford don, 1911, New York Times
As to the American Rhodes Scholars, I am much impressed by the men personally. They are above the average, I think, as regards keenness and industry. I should describe them as thoroughly good fellows, but I do not think they compare with the better average undergraduates as regards scholarship and training…they seem very deficient in scholarship in a wider sense. Some are terribly rough intellectually, with little or no literary sense and very limited command over expression. In the composition of an English essay they have, as a rule, almost everything to learn.
Oxford don, 1911, New York Times
Sports
When Rhodes' will was first made public, many Britons anticipated that the chief benefit to Oxford would be the addition of hearty Americans to its sports teams. Some Oxonians even hoped that the Americans would help to establish permanent dominance over Cambridge. The Americans would be slightly older, larger, stronger, and more experienced than the average undergraduate.
Virtually every American did join at least one of his college teams. Rhodes Scholars unanimously praised the amateur spirit of English athletics. Sports in American universities were already becoming big business, spectator affairs, with highly paid professional coaches and rigorous training programs. Rhodes Scholars echoed Teddy Roosevelt, who bemoaned the win-at-all cost attitude and the high number of injuries and deaths incurred in American football.1
The key words in British university sports were amateurism and participation. The coaches were unpaid students. The ideal was that every able-bodied student play on one or more of his college's teams in matches against the other colleges. There was no desire for large numbers of spectators. One played for exercise, for fun, for camaraderie, and for the vigor to resist the cool temperatures that were the norm both indoors and outdoors. The very best athletes from all the colleges were selected for the all-university squads that faced the Cantabs (i.e., Cambridge) each year in the varsity matches.
The Americans were not expected to help much in the sports unfamiliar to them – especially cricket. However, each year they did make significant contributions in rowing, track and field, tennis, and rugby. Dozens of the early Rhodes Scholars won blues or half-blues or were captains of their college teams.2 The most illustrious was Lawrence Hull (1907), who led the Oxford track team against Cambridge in 1909. He won the quarter-mile and the hundred-yard dash, despite pain from a recently sprained ankle. His athletic feats and friendly personality made him a hero, and one of his fellow Americans reported that the British were eating out of his hand. In 1910 he served as president of the Oxford University Athletics Club.3
Nevertheless, there was a down side to these successes. Though Americans as a whole never came to dominate any sports in this early period, many British students and journalists thought that the upstart newcomers had an unfair advantage. The ordinary British public schoolboy had little chance against these older, ruthless behemoths.4 Harold Merriam (1904) was branded “daucedly ungentlemanly” for tackling an opposing player in a rugby match.5 In response to such criticisms, the colleges banded together in 1914 to impose restrictions on Rhodes Scholars in sports. These new rules did not specifically mention Rhodes Scholars, but they were clearly the target. Thereafter no student who had attended another university prior to Oxford could participate in “freshers” sports. This would prevent eighteen-year-old Britons from having to compete against much older Rhodes Scholars. Furthermore, no student over the age of twenty-four could compete in any sport whatsoever.6
Lawrence Hull himself, by that time back in the United States, admitted the justice of these rules. He added, however, that the fear of Americans dominating British amateur sports was terribly overblown. “The simple fact,” he said, “is that the American Rhodes Scholars have not come up to expectations in athletics.”7 Only about one American per year earned a blue. The only sport where Americans were consistently among the leaders was track.
The controversy over the 1914 regulations soon subsided, and in general the Americans' athletic contributions were heartily appreciated.
Academic Performance
For most Americans, academic studies in Oxford ranked third, trailing social life and sports. For evidence of this one can consult early issues of the two quarterly magazines that they published. After Earle Murray (1904) returned home in 1907, he thought it would be a grand idea if Rhodes Scholars maintained contact with one another throughout their careers. He immediately began publishing the Alumni Magazine. That venture was modest and never became the thriving enterprise he had anticipated. Losing enthusiasm for the project, Murray ceased publication in 1913. The following year, however, Frank Aydelotte determined to revive the idea and to establish a full-fledged alumni association. The new journal was The American Oxonian, and he mailed it to every scholar returning from Oxford. Each person also automatically became a member of the Alumni Association of American Rhodes Scholars (the word Alumni was later dropped). Thanks to Aydelotte's unflagging zeal, the journal and the association would flourish to the present day. If one looks at the Alumni Magazine and early issues of The American Oxonian, one sees that far fewer than half of the pages concern the academic side of life in Oxford.
How did the Rhodes Scholars perform as “scholars”? In view of the difficulty in the early years of recruiting large numbers of applicants and the busy social and athletic lives that they led once they arrived in Oxford, it is not surprising that their academic record was decidedly uneven.
In fact, the academic performance by American Rhodes Scholars in general was a distinct disappointment, both to British and American