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get the titles of B.A. and M.A. they will use these titles as a lever. No party to a compromise which is no solution can therefore prevent their unsatisfied demands from being again revived with increased chance of success, and from being finally satisfied by the very simple process of turning the appearance into the reality of B.A. and M.A.

Oxford, March 11.

UNIVERSITY DEGREES FOR WOMEN

The Professor Sidgwick referred to at the end of this letter was Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. He was a brother of Mr. Arthur Sidgwick of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and died in 1900. His wife was Eleanor Mildred Balfour, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.

FROM The Times, APRIL 6, 1897.

Englishmen rightly love compromise, to settle their differences by mutual concessions. But there are two kinds of compromise-the contented and the discontented, settlement and unsettlement; the one in which both parties will acquiesce, the other in which one or other will not. The proposal of the Syndicate at Cambridge is admittedly a compromise; it gives titles of degrees as qualifications for appointments, but refuses real degrees and any satisfaction of the further demands of women for rights of instruction, endowment, and membership. But what sort of a compromise is this? I am glad I began this correspondence, because it may do something to enable University men to decide the question whether this compromise would be a settlement or not, whether it would be good or bad.

According to Mrs. Sidgwick the compromise would be a settlement. We shall accept the gift gratefully, she says in her letter to you of March 18, and acquiesce in the refusal.' She will acquiesce, no doubt; but what right has she to say we shall

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acquiesce'? The reason she gives is that the compromise would satisfy the needs of the great majority of the women concerned, while the unsatisfied demands are mainly those of the few women who remain at Cambridge after their tripos or are on the staffs of the women's colleges. If this argument were true in fact she might have some right, in her deservedly high position, to say 'we shall acquiesce', in the sense that the minority would not press their demands when the majority were well content. But it is not true in fact. Seeing that the great majority of the persons concerned' have themselves made the whole of the demands, those to be satisfied and those to be left unsatisfied, Mrs. Sidgwick can have no right to say so sweepingly for them, we shall acquiesce'.

6

The fact is that practically all the students of Girton and Newnham Colleges have signed an absolutely comprehensive memorial for admission to the full rights of the University. It was printed in the Cambridge University Reporter, Feb. 18, 1896, p. 489, as follows:

'To the Vice-Chancellor and the Council of the Senate of the 'University of Cambridge.

'We, the undersigned students of Girton and Newnham Colleges, knowing that a memorial from members of the 'Senate has been presented to you praying for the admission of women to degrees, beg respectfully to lay before you the following considerations in support of that petition. While ' appreciating to the full the privileges accorded by the graces of the Senate, February 24, 1881, we feel that women are ' without the encouragement and support which status in the University confers. Since at the present time the official ' relation of the University to the education of women is that ' of an examining body only, they owe the privileges of an ' academic education to the courtesy of the teachers of the 'University. We are conscious that women do not share fully in the great benefits which the University has the power to bestow upon education, learning, and research. While women who study at Cambridge are without the usual recognition which the students of other Universities receive, we

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'believe that they suffer a disability which not only places 'many of them at a disadvantage in their professional work, but also affects injuriously the widest interests of education. 'We therefore pray that such steps as may be deemed necessary be taken to provide for the admission of duly qualified women to the degrees of the University of Cambridge.'

On this plain text a detailed commentary was written in November last, at the request of the Syndicate, by Miss Clough and Miss Jex-Blake, as secretaries, giving as they say, evidence in support of our memorial concerning degrees for women'. It was printed in the Reporter, March 1, 1897, p. 603, but is too long to quote. It begins by stating that out of 1,539 students of Girton and Newnham Colleges 1,234 signed the memorial, while 149 received it too late, so that not 200 purposely avoided signing. Then it enumerates the seven following disadvantages under which women now labour-the very general impression that their course of study is inferior to that of men, restrictions on their use of the University library, exclusion from almost all University prizes and scholarships, debarment from dissertations for higher degrees, severance and isolation of women teachers from the University, precarious tenure by mere courtesy of access to University lectures and laboratories, and, finally, insufficiency of the Vice-Chancellor's certificate as a qualification for appointments.

After reading this text and commentary, no plain, honest man can believe for a moment in the reality, not to say the sincerity of the compromise. He cannot believe, either that the unsatisfied demands are those of the minority, or that the compromise would satisfy the needs of the great majority of women concerned, or that they will acquiesce, or that a proposal to satisfy one out of seven demands made in the name of practically all the women students can be that good kind of compromise in which England delights. If such a compromise is

carried at Cambridge it will produce nothing but a discontented unsettlement of both the Universities for years to come, not unlike that which tore Rome while she was extending parts of her citizenship without the civitas optimo iure.

But why, extremists will ask, should the University stick at one demand rather than satisfy all seven at once by giving women the civitas optimo iure of real degrees? I have sufficient sympathy with this question to admire its candour, and hold that it would be the proper issue to put before the Universities, and before both at the same time, if anything is put at all. But in the interests of English education I hope that it will not be put, and if put that it will be negatived. Professor Stanford put the case against women's degrees very well in your issue of March 18. I take it the difficult thing for the public to see is why women having degrees at other Universities should not have them at Oxford and Cambridge. The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the peculiarity of those Universities. Oxford and Cambridge are no ordinary Universities; they are Universities in University towns. One beauty of them has been the seclusion of young men from young women at a susceptible time of life. On the other hand, the very fact that they are in University towns would make the mixture of male and female students much closer than in great cities. Oxford and Cambridge again are traditional Universities, where everything has been bequeathed for men and is now adapted to men. They are ancient foundations, not at all like a new University in Wales. They are like old historical clubs, where the intrusion of women must at once introduce perpetual bickering; and it is a significant omen of the future of Cambridge that the undergraduates, who are too apt to be overlooked in the enthusiasm of innovation, have on this occasion signified their opposition by a great majority.

We are unanimous that these two ancient Universities have for centuries been good for men. We are not unanimous that either of them would be good as a mixed University for men and women. Once more, Oxford and Cambridge are based on the firm foundation of the Greek and Latin classics, and on the wisdom of the ancients as well as on the science of the moderns. The admission of women to degrees would sap this foundation; hence the Syndicate does not propose to require Latin and Greek of women, so that its proposal, so far from being a solution, is even something of a sham. It is not, however, a question merely of Greek and Latin; there is a character in all male education which it would be a disaster to lose or mar by assimilation to female education such as must happen if women have degrees. Lastly, Oxford and Cambridge are models, standards, practical ideals of English education. If women could once feel their feet in them they would desert all places devoted to the completion of separate female education, where alone its special problems can expect solution. Thus the full degrees of Oxford and Cambridge would produce two contraposed disasters-the gradual assimilation of male to female, of female to male, education.

There will be those again who, as Mr. W. C. Sidgwick says in his letter of March 18, will wish to vote for the moment with the extremists for the proposal to give titles of degrees as qualifications for appointments, in the belief, or with the hope, that they may hereafter be able to resist the same extremists when the latter go coolly and consequentially on to their further demands for real degrees. But I pray these Moderates to consider what a phalanx of united Amazons and Athenians will then be arrayed on the other side-practically all the women and all the men who from the first have been advancing step by step towards real degrees; and

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