Once-over-leftly soufle

Sir—Conrad Bollinger has recently contributed one of his once-over-leftly souffle histories of "reds" at Victoria this time on "reds" on the staff of Salient. These histories appear from time in various publications at Victoria and appear to gain little in either acuracy or historical perspective in spite of the passing of time. He has this to say about my term as editor:

"Entering with the firm intent to make Salient as one-eyed right as he was sure it had always been one-eyed left McIntyre soon found that things weren't as simple as that. Working with a group heavily imbued with the red tradition he came to accept it as not only necessary but desirable."

Bollinger does himself less than justice. He was certainly of the red bloc but his sense of humour, good sense and ability prevented him from adopting its tactics. When Salient looked like excaping from their control most of the staff reds were not prepared to work with an editor who believed that ramming the communist Peace Movement, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (a communist front organisation), the communist world student organisation and articles journalists with communist leanings writing in various left wing publications into Salient was becoming on imposition and a bore. The reds demonstrated at editorial meetings that their answer was disruption and abuse but Bollinger, after writing a few articles as a try-on which I permanently postponed, could not resist restoring good relations. Meetings to make up the paper were prolonged or badly attended and steps had to be taken to do without red "help" in order to get Salient out at all.

The assertion that I came to accept the red tradition as "not only necessary but desirable" is nonsense if it refers to the kind of political handout with which the university reds had overloaded Salient, but if it means that it is necessary for a university newspaper to be outspoken then Conrad Bollinger and I have once more ended up reluctant allies.

Salient in 1968 is very close to the concept I had of it during my term as editor and I am sure that its present staff do not see themselves as one eyed right.