Foreign Contacts.

The approach of the yearly Rhodes Scholarship nominations and the extracts we publish in this issue from a letter of a recent graduate of this College who is now at Oxford make us long for the great advantages we could derive from further foreign contacts. Very rarely do we hear direct descriptions of activities in foreign Universities. Of this life we know only by hearsay and legend. For us Europe and America are still largely mythical continents, enticing in their romantic vagueness. It is because of this spasmodic and infrequent acquaintance with their interests and activities that we become encased in our own petty round of academic routine, and grow apathetic and cynical in the face of larger issues.

One way of enlivening New Zealand student life, as of improving our national life, is to extend our knowledge and appreciation of what others are doing. We want to know not what the newspapers tell us, not of the reorganisations of British Cabinets, nor of Roosevelt's plans for a gigantic N.R.A. propaganda movement, but of the everyday life that lies behind all this. These events will seem much more vital—and indeed can only be properly interpreted—if we view them in the perspective of the habits and life beneath the foam of newspaper headlines.

Particularly should the University foster these contacts. Far removed as we are from the centres of activity, we can participate but little in the highly-organised systems of student travel in Europe and America. There, every country has its student travel bureau, which organises travelling parties of students, who visit many countries, even attend vacation courses abroad, and all at an expense which would hardly enable a New Zealand student to travel to Tournament. The hospitality with which visiting groups of students are entertained while abroad, the international feeling and co-operation of the student body, marks one of the brightest hopes for the eventual growth of international understanding. Here, greater far than the activities of the League of Nations, lies a hope for future international peace.

What part has the New Zealand student to play in this? The only contact between New Zealand students and those of other countries is through that delightfullly vague and abstract body, the N.Z.U.S.A. Though it receives some important-looking correspondence which has lately adorned our letter-rack, the contacts or information that the vast body of students receive from it are nil. Distance bars travel to the majority. But in the exchange of student newspapers and co-operation in such activities as the international student peace ballot, in the co-operation particularly of groups within each College with similar groups abroad, lies a vast field for improving student life. Our Anti-War Movement, for example, might have joined in the international one-hour student strike against Fascism and war on April 12. Such things seem trivial individually, but in bulk they build up that vast background which is essential if we are to grow from narrow national jealousies into full citizens of the world.