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The WUS-International was founded
l920 in Switzerland upon an initiative of the
World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). In
this line it is one of the oldest international
organizations in the field of education. A
fact-finding report of some of its founding
members in various European countries showed a
physically and morally devastated landscape of
universities in the former enemy countries after
World War I.
This scene has repeated itself in
even more countries after World War II. and,
regrettably, it still prevails in various
regions and countries all over the world,
wherever national and international conflicts
and wars destroy cultures and civilizations, not
even mentioning the normal difficulties of
developing education in many countries of the
world. The WUS-International has material about
this and in this context it may be interesting
to read a publication of the World University
Service in Geneva which was published on its 45th
birthday in l965. The report “Rebuilding Europe
1920 – 1926 reads in its beginning like a ghost
story:
“India
in time of famine, the ruins of Adana, French
towns under air-raid bombardment, devastated war
areas, San Francisco after the earthquake,
prisoner-of-war camps – I have seen them all,
but Vienna as I saw it in February l920
remains burnt in my memory as yet nearer thing
to hell…Despair, suicide, one meal a day or
less, no underclothing, broken shoes in the
winter slush, sleeping in restaurants or
lavatories, all these things the commonplace of
life among 15,000 men and women in the
universities and colleges of Vienna and over it
all, hanging like a pall, the feeling that
nobody cared.” – Thus, writing in l925, did Ruth
Rouse describe her reactions to her first Vienna
visit made on behalf of the World Student
Christian Federation (WSCF), of which she was
then the Travelling Secretary? Her visit and the
relief campaign launched in response to her
appeal, represent the birth of the World
University Service. The relief efforts on behalf
of Austria and the other war-ravaged countries
of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, were
given an organisational framework in August
1920, when the WSCF, meeting in St. Beatenberg,
Switzerland, established a special committee to
promote relief activities, naming it European
Student Relief (ESR).The World University
Service as it now exists is the direct
descendant of ESR….During the five years, it
uncovered and dealt with problems as dramatic
and horrible as those of Vienna: in Germany,
Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Soviet Union,
Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Turkey, Yugoslavia and
elsewhere in Europe and the Near East. And
university people in the rest of the world
responded to the needs as presented by ESR…”
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