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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 1. March 13, 1958

[Introduction]

"They builded their Gods in the Wilderness of Old . . ."—S.S.M.

"Ring out the old, ring in the new."

—Tennyson.

Hail to the Victoria University of Wellington! Farewell to Victoria University College, to which, nearly sixty years ago, we swore troth and fealty! The King is dead; long live the King! There remans to us merely the decent obsequies; a few kind words, and an age of reminiscence. Wherefore am I bidden, because I am the sole survivor of the first editorial staff, to give a final bow for the happy past, and to offer a proud salute to a still more happy future.

It is not my task to add materially to the dry records of a great institution, but just, in a few odd places, to lift the curtain; to expose the human touch; to give, if I can, to a few statistical facts the breath of life; for it is to the written word the future must look to discover whether we were men and women and not merely automata. If the first four professors do not spring from the page, the fault lies in the telling. Each in his own fashion was an individual, "a scholar and a gentleman". They were, at the beginning of the century, a trifle young for the conventional professor, and we, the students, eager and waiting, a shade elderly for the traditional "fresher". We knew, however, our own and each other's handicaps. We took all things lightly—and together. It was for these things that we loved the College. If we thought Professor John Rankine Brown a trifle pompous in the Little matter of Caesarian prose, we soon discovered that he was "all white" underneath; appreciative, helpful and forbearing. We owe the "Song of Victoria College" to his enthusiasm. That song was placed in my own hands and construed by the Professor word for word, down there on Thorndon Quay. "Auferunt decidiam" was "blow away the cobwebs!" for the "venti turbulenti" were already blowing. That was in 1902, when we had no "local habitation" and the Quay led to the old Thorndon Baths, where, in due course, we held our first swimming sports. Speaking of verses, I felt I had received another gift from the gods when Seaforth Mackenzie (S.S.M.) handed me the manuscript of "The Ode on the laying of the foundation stone of Victoria College, 27th August, 1904", and with what pride I took it to the University Office for appraisal by our old friend J. W. Joynt, of Trinity College, Dublin (Registrar of the New Zealand University).

Mr. F. A. de la Mare, besides being a foundation student, an enthusiastic sportsman (athlete, rugby player and cricketer) also, in 1958, finds it possible to belong to both the N.Z. Alliance and the N.Z. Rationalist Society. Now practising as a lawyer at Hamilton, he finds time each May to write to "Salient" protesting at the depravity and loose-living of the modern student, as evidenced in each Cappicade.