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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 15, No. 10. June 11, 1952

[Introduction]

The ambiguous decision that Communism was not a new form of Popery was reached by a small majority at a Little Theatre debate on May 2. There was an attendance of about 90. The night was cold and most of the audience sat muffled in coats shivering as dejectedly as Samoans at the South Pole. Whether the temperature affected the speakers or not is, of course, debatable but few were really heated. Interjections of note were also scarcer than usual. Mr. Curtain was in the chair. Professor Hughes was judge.

With missionary fervour Bryce Harland opened for the affirmative a subject "pregnant with possibilities." Although both Communism and Catholicism were "pseudo-religious" "both had a profound insight into truth." Both believed it to be their sacred mission to establish absolute dominion over all human beings.

As leader for the negative Conrad Bollinger began the best speech of the evening by pointing out to the "dear brethren there assembled, that tonight's debate achieved the great United Front that he had dreamed of in the college—that between Communists and Catholics, the first represented by himself, the second "by the youngest, blushing flower of the Papacy"—Mr. Cody. [Mr. Cody fulfilled his part by blushing "fellow-traveller" pink.] Mr. Bollinger demonstrated that this Unholy Alliance was only one of debating expediency, by comparing Marxian and Papal statements. He also defined the subject, something which the affrimative speakers neglected to do.

John Patterson (of fair-rent fame) rose to demonstrate that "the devil can cite Scripture to his own purpose." His reading of the Apocalypse was in the best Bible-banging tradition. He poured forth a torrent of picturesque details about a scarlet woman and a beast with seven heads and ten horns (or was it the other way about?). See O.P. He ended with a flourish of "argumentum ad hominen seeing Mr. Bollinger, in the immortal word of "Freedom"—"kowtowing before the ikons of Czar Stalin the First" while Mr. Cody bowed low before the ikons of his Church." In the words of the Apocalypse the audience "was filled with great wonder."

John Cody staggered to his feet and suggested that Mr. Patterson might be inebriated. He would recommend to him a little book of Hilaire Belloc's—"A Cautionary Book of Bad Beasts for Naughty Children." He remarked that he would introduce some wisdom into the debate (hollow laugh from audience) no less than some philosophy. (What a big word!) The whole thing was a matter of fundamentals, and if he could prove a fundamental difference of nature between Communism and Catholicism, his side's case would be indisputably proved. By coincidence he could! Pointing out the fundamental difference between a materialist (Communism) and a realist philosophy (Catholicism).