When Cecil Rhodes established his endowment to enable a select group of American young men to study at Oxford, he set up a greater claim to the gratitude of posterity than he had done by all his brilliant achievement as an empire builder in South Africa: That endowment was a modest beginning. It had nothing of the popular glamor of a Cape to Cairo project, but it was of great significance to the future progress of the world.

So successful did his plan of international study prove, that many philanthropists have followed his lead and established numerous other scholarships and fellowships to promote the same end. There is scarcely a civilized country today which has not been draws into this Student's League of Nations whose envoys are not diplomats but scholars, and whose common interest is not mutual distrust sprung from national ambition, but mutual understanding sprung from a common love of Truth.

The Guggenheim Foundation which has just been announced marks another epoch in this movement. It affords the freest possible opportunities for advanced study and research in the sciences, learned professions, and fine arts. No age limits are prescribed, the fellowships will be open to both men and women of every race, color and creed. The awards will enable students to "carry on their studies in any country in the world where they can work most profitably," Mr. Guggenheim states as the purpose of the foundation to "improve the quality of education" and the "practice of the arts and professions" in the United States, and to "foster research".

Aside from promoting better international understanding, these fellowships will do their part to create a new appreciation of scholarship. Shallow materialistic philosophies have tended to throw too much emphasis upon that which is immediately useful. This attitude adopted in the colleges crowns the athlete with laurel and scorns the scholar toiling alone in his garret. But more and more true scholarship is coming into its own. As American universities develop greater background they are placing greater emphasis upon intellectual values. The recognition most appreciated by the true student is that which, like the Guggenheim Fellowships, not merely acknowledges past merit but opens the door to continued study and greater achievement.