Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 9, No. 11. August 21, 1946

[Letter from Weekly Haircut to Salient Vol. 9, No. 11. August, 21, 1946]

Dear Sir.—Would it be asking too much to demand that "Salient" refrain from employing dipsomaniacal subeditors? Drunken orgies in the editorial rooms are the only possible explanation of the inclusion of "Lesson in the Morgue" in your issue of July 24. Presumably this outrage comes under the heading of "Modern Verse," for it is typical of the work of present-day poets who have neither "ability nor time for metre and rhyme." Maurice James has surpassed ever the wildest excesses of T.S. Eliot and Stephen Spender.

I visualise the scene of the conception of the atrocity as a [ unclear: Smgy] little smoke-laden room, no doubt hired to lend atmosphere to the occasion. Mercifully obscured in the noisome fog sprawls a collection of modern youth—the "gentler" sex uncouth, ill-favoured, and indecent; the "male" portion slouching about with ties askew, chain smoking. All are jabbering at the same time, making the place an absolute bedlam of oft-repeated Communistic catch-phrases. And in one corner oblivious to the raucous chorus, our hero perpetrates his masterpiece.

Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us! Such solecistic balderdash serves but to camouflage the poverty of its author's thought. Why must he waste his precious youth in such a futile manner? Here is a world where useful work is crying aloud to be done, and a misguided community allows able-bodied young men to fritter away their time in vain endeavours to express ideas which really do not exist.

Weekly Haircut.