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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review Capping Carnival 1920

Our Modern Craze

Our Modern Craze

What's all this uproar? Must I call attention
To regulation 3 enjoining silence?
The seventh volume of the training manuals
Should have prevented further mention.

page 18

Our modern craze, viz., Officialdom
Makes regulations for everyone
Countless, cheap and pernickety.
It turns 'em out for everyone.
We've laws and by-laws, the decrees of fashions;
We've statutes, notices and ordinances,
On buying sugar, chaperoning dances;
On wages, coal, the flu, golf, poker, rations.
This sorry craze has a symptom new:
'Tis printing forms off—green, pink, and blue;
And should you fail to fill any
Form 90 (j)—'tis all up with you!
Now Sunday tennis must be awful naughty,
According to the light of Mr. Forsyth;
Though stout Sir Robert is with vicars more blithe,
I never knew Sir Bob was half so sporty.
Says Thomas Forsyth: "Professors should
Hush up these frolics—the courts seclude,
In case such sins should shock us,
Who are so good—we are so good."
For two days' cricket, if you hire the Basin,
Our charge is £2/4/0," so the City Council;
But for athletics, usual charge for grounds 'll
"Be," what our Mr. Brook would term amazin',
Hire twenty quidlets—deposit ten—
Pay advertising—employ our men—
Marking—two guineas extra—
The pit ten bob—repairs your job . . . ."

(We regret we cannot condense all this letter to a single chorus. It's scandalous entirety will be found in the City Council's letter-book, and we suppose in their regulations.)

And every evening, as I turn home laden
With latest forms and rules from every quarter,
I think how many who are sane and healthy
Must act like fools to please the ones who made 'em.
If this continues I'll stoush those fools,
Who gazette their whimsies (Queensbury rules),
Then spend an early dotage
Evading State asylum rules.