"There Is No Life Without Song"

When Czech resistance fighter Julius Fuchik was writing his "Notes" in a Gestapo dungeon, and smuggling them out to the world, he wrote: "There is no life without song, as there is no life without the sun." This thought was adopted by the IUS as a motto for their songbook "Youth Sings" (published 1949), containing some 200 pages of songs with music from practically every country in the world—student songs, folk songs, songs of national movement.

Less ambitious, but just as effective for its purpose, is NZUSA's latest publication, "Song Book" (edited by Michael Conway of Canterbury), which apeared at the end of January. Certainly there is no student life without song. It contains the words of 87 of the songs heard most often wherever New Zealand students gather together.

It opens, suitably enough, with Blake's "Jerusalem," its words expressive of the faith shared by many of us in a juster future secured by the moral struggle of men. With rather alarming suddenness, we walk thence straight into the less refined American folk songs, "Frankie and Albert" and "Nancy Brown"—two of the most popular melodies around the fire on tramping trips and by candlelight at Congresses. Other folk songs included are "The Eriskay Love-Lilt." "The Foggy Dew," "Sir Roger of Kildare," "Weeping and Wailing," "Greensleeves" and "Samuel Hall." It is tragic that some of these have had to be hacked at with a pair of pruning-shears to meet the requirements of certain provisions of the law.

It is wonderful to see a few New Zealand-born songs in print—not only "Po Kare Kare Ana"—but "No More Double-Bunking" and "A Fast Pair of Skis;" and, on the extravaganza level, the redoubtable "Rollo the Ravaging Roman," and even "When Serge and I Were Young" and the subsequent plotsk on behalf of Trotsk.

The book can be said to reflect quite faithfully the feelings of students in this country as expressed by what they sing. Many familiar groups are represented. Several hymns and Christmas carols are scattered through the book, and there are a number of well-known rebel songs—"La Marseillaise" for example, and "Joe Hill," "Bandiera Rossa," and "The Peat-Bog Soldiers"—sprung from a variety of times and climes, but all singing of man's struggle through darkness to light. In this age of the release of Krupp and the rearming of Hitler's [unclear: Wehrmacht], it would be well for us to sing more often the prayer of the German political prisoners of ten or fifteen years ago.

I think the editor is to be especially congratulated on his arrangement. The placing of "Aupres de ma Blonde" opposite Mozart's "Crade Song," and "God Defend New Zealand" looking across at "The Red Flag," will delight student eyes.

Yes, for freshers or permanent undergraduates, it's a good bob's worth.

—Partisan.