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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 1, No. 14 July 6, 1938

Not a Confession — "Inellectual Prostitute's" — Angle on Empire Day

Not a Confession

"Inellectual Prostitute's"

Angle on Empire Day.

Dear "Salient."

I notice you are always having a quiet dig at the Press. Every journalist you meet is an "Intellectual prostitute." Ah well, all university adolescents have been saying that since the dawn of the newspaper. Still, I admit that journalists would often like to report things as they see them. Possibly hey are too king heated to do so.

What, for example, would have happened if a paragraph had appeared in the Press to the effect that when a certain county council was discussing the possibility of making a donation to the King George V Memorial Fund last year, one councilor suggested giving £15. Then shame-facedly asked if that was too much, while another councilor jumped up and said I would be better to make it 15 guineas as it sounded better?"

Still, it would be nice occasionally to have a free hand when out on a story. If I had been able to report his year's Empire Day ceremony in Wellington as I liked my angle on it would have been something like this:—

Flam-Bellied Flag Flapism.

Umpire Day, At noon members of the Wikitoria League and the Royal Umpire Society are to place wreaths on Queen Wikitoria's statue in Oxford Terrace, Poneke to commemorate the glorious growth of the British Umpire last century for which she was responsible—the glorious killing of many innocent people, the glorious sacking of villages and townships, he glorious world-wide thefts of land from primitive peoples. There are to be no speeches.

Wanted, a Photographer.

At noon the members of high society and other lounge lizards who have gathered at the memorial are agitated. No photographer has arrived. I am expected to produce one. The men present put through frantic telephone calls and he assemblage waits. What would be the use of the function if no photograph appeared in The Press?

I begin to take names from an angular woman. "Now put a comma there," she says,. "Now start a new line. What a horrible writer you are no, no, not A. Jacks, Ajax. It's evident you never have anything to do with society reporting. I suppose you'd have understood me if I'd said Carnera." I take it all and say nothing.

At 12.30 a photographer arrives. The group poses gracefully about the "hoary old widow's feet and the picture is taken (so much cheaper getting the Press to do it). The wreaths are laid and—well, that's that for another year.

—D.C.B.