Volume 148 — OXFORD IN WAR TIME.
Reading edition
Who that beheld her robed in May Could guess the change that six months later Has brought such wondrous disarray Upon his alma mater? Distracted by a world-wide strife, The calm routine of study ceases; And Oxford's academic life Is broken all to pieces. No more the intellectual youth Feeds on perpetual paradoxes; No longer in the quest of truth The mental compass boxes. Gone are the old luxurious days When, always craving something subtler, To Bergson's metaphysic maze He turned from Samuel Butler. Linked by the brotherhood of arms All jarring coteries are blended; Mere cleverness no longer charms; The cult of Blues is ended. The boats are of their crews bereft; The parks are given up to training; The scanty hundreds who are left All at the leash are straining. And grave professors, making light Of all the load of anno domini, Devote the day to drill, the night To Clausewitz and Jomini. While those who feel too old to fight Full nobly with the pen are serving To weld conflicting views of right In one resolve unswerving. No more can essayists inveigh Against the youth of Oxford, slighting Her "young barbarians all at play," When nine in ten are fighting, And some, the goodliest and the best, Beloved of comrades and commanders, Have passed untimely to their rest Upon the plains of Flanders. No; when two thousand of her sons Are mustered under Freedom's banner, None can declaim—except the Huns— Against the Oxford manner. For lo! amid her spires and streams, The lure of cloistered ease forsaking, The dreamer, noble in her dreams, Is nobler in her waking.
"Lest we forget."
In these days, when we have to be thankful that our country has not, like Belgium and France, been overrun by savages, the greater mercies we receive are apt to obscure the less. But Swansea does not forget the smaller mercies. According to a recent issue of The South Wales Daily Post, "The Swansea Town F.C. are coming for the second time to St. Nicholas' Church, Gloucester Place, Swansea, on Sunday evening next, at 6.30, when the directors, committee and the two full teams have promised to attend the service, that, in the words of the Rev. Percy Weston, will be in the nature of a "thanksgiving service for their good fortune against Newcastle United"."
Our compliments to the Rev. Percy Weston, pastor of this pious and patriot flock.