Editorial

A few weeks ago, at the Canterbury University College Jubilee celebrations, Bishop Sprott lamented the fact that so few men and women of University training found their way into public life. He was inclined to blame the public for its lack of encouragement. That dear old grandmotherly rail-sitter, the "Evening Post," took the page 8 matter up, and in a leading article, the details of which have escaped our memory, but which in its general drift, so far as it had one, was about as clear as most of the "Post's" leading articles, agreed that the fact was so, blaming, however, not the public, but the University. The people of New Zealand, apparently, are thirsting for righteousness with parched throats; they look towards the seats of Higher Learning for the philosopher-statesmen to step down and guide their faltering footsteps in the way that they should go. Alas! the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. Meanwhile, we in our dens of moral turpitude and sedition grate on our scrannel pipes with lean and flashy songs—what recks it us? It is all very sad. We have been told that if you mention the University to a Wellington business man, he will either burst into tears or fall back in his swivel chair and foam at the mouth. Evidently there is something wrong somewhere.

There is, anyhow, something grotesque in the idea that University though t has ever met with any general encouragement in New Zealand, much less in the capital city, and certainly least of all in the last few years. You might live in Wellington for ten years without discovering that it is a University town; and then only find it out from a column of silly accusations and twaddle in the paper by a Minister of the Crown or one of the numerous idiotic "leagues" with which the country is cursed. We believe that Bishop Sprott was right when he blamed the public; but we believe also that there is something in the vague remarks of the "Evening Post." As a University with a considerable number of graduates scattered through the country, and a far greater number of ex students who, presumably, have learnt the elements of tolerance and free thought in their years at College, we do not occupy the position of rational influence and moral weight in the community that we should. Our reason and morality (which, after all, are much the same thing) as a factor in the development of affairs are absolutely nil. They should be one of the most powerful influences at work in the country, and they must attain this influence if our country is ever to be governed and play its part in history with the least elements of rationality and dignity.

So much is platitude. There is only one remedy, and to point it out is platitude also. However, the world is run on platitudes, and we can only keep hammering away at the better ones in the hope that some day we will act as if they were true and vital; when our action will be far from platitudinous. The conditions of our University, with all our twenty-five years of material progress, are as unfavourable as they can be. There is no need to emphasise them again. Under such conditions, we have to build up the spirit of a University—not the spirit of knowledge for its own sake, but of knowledge bound up with and guiding life to worthy ends. We can only get that spirit by taking thought; and that is the most difficult thing in the world. We have seven hundred students—and how many of these take part in the things which make the essential University? How many are really interested in education—which is not, as an enthusiastic young professor (not of V.U.C.) once;remarked to us, listening to a stupid course of lectures, but sitting up with a friend till 2 o'clock in the morning discussing the things that matter'? How many are willing to try for a moment occasionally to page 9 indulge in what in America is called "creative thought" as distinguished from mere "rationalising"? Very few, even of us who think we are. How many are willing to treat a serious question seriously when an unpopular point of view is put forward? Last year, during the war-scare, two speakers came up to 'Victoria at the invitation of one of the Clubs to appeal for that treatment, which was necessary then if ever it was. They were howled down by a mob which came prepared to break up the meeting, and proceeded to pass a noisy motion affirming the loyalty of Victoria University College to the British Empire. How gratifying to the Empire! We have got to recognise that perhaps the majority of our students, like everyone else, are like that; and that that is all part of the material with which the University has to work on public life.

The work will not be done directly—from its very nature, it can hardly be done as a series of tangible, immediately apprehended acts. We should undoubtedly have men and women of University training in greatly increasing numbers in Parliament and in every other place where they are, or should be, openings for clearer thought and finer action. If there is any chance of producing Plato's philosopher-statesman, let us produce him and bless ourselves for having done so. But in the wider field, the ordinary common affairs of life and politics, surely as individuals we can set an example to ourselves and our fellows. Tolstoy, one of many who have discovered the panacea, said "To bring about the greatest and most important changes in the life of men there is no need of great exploits—of the arming of millions of troops, of the construction of new railroads and machines, of the organisation of exhibitions and of trade unions, of revolutions, of barricades, of the invention of aerial navigation, and so on; all that s necessary is a change of public opinion." It is so simple, and so difficult, as that. "All that is necessary"—there is something disarming, something infinitely pathetic, about the naivete of great genius. It is all that is necessary; and we as students, ostensibly and virtually, must make it our business to change public opinion. With Briffault we can see that opinions are the only indictable offences; can we not make for ourselves a "more critical intellectual rectitude?" With James Harvey Robinson, one of the finest of American historical minds, can we not "first endeavour to free our own minds and then do what we can to hearten others to free theirs?" Can we not combine the steady passion for truth of Milton with Danton's "Toujours de l'audace!" Every year more and more students come to Victoria, mostly young, some sadly biassed from their public-school training. The University has to give them a greater training—a training in thought, a training in tolerance of everything but bad and loose and a priori thought. We are all young; and we have been told often enough that we are full of illusions. God knows that the youth of this generation at least has very few illusions—either about politics or anything else.

Many men have pointed out that we are singularly oblivious to the large concerns of life. It should be our part to cultivate, with careful honesty, those large concerns—those concerns which from the very fact of their omnipresence are so liable to slip by page 10 unheeded. There is nothing about, which we should not concern ourselves. Wisdom is our aim—the wisdom that combats the stupid and wrong-headed, the out-of-date survivals of ancient opinions. We may garner wisdom smite day, and then the criminal immorality of a Back-to-the-Bible campaign, and the criminal immorality of a New Zealand Government which can prohibit the importation into the country of a book on birth-control may both alike become impossible.

A volume of essays^*has recently been published on the influence on history of ancient Hellas and its meaning for us. One of the finest of its contributions is the essay on the political thought of the Greeks, by Professor A. E. Zimmern, the student of the Greek commonwealth. He quotes a famous pasage of Plato, and says:—

"What are the chief and most enduring thoughts which contact with the Greek political thinkers leaves us? They are surely twofold, the first concerning the material of politics, the second concerning the men and women of to-day who are called to be citizens. Public affairs, we feel, so far from being a tiresome preoccupation or a 'dirty business' are one of the great permanent interests of the race: if they were not too trivial or too debasing for great artists like Thucydides and Plato, we need not fear lest they be too trivial or debasing for ourselves. And if they are not beneath our study, neither should they elude it by being enwrapped in clouds of rhetoric or in the cotton-wool of sentimentality. The Greeks should teach us, once and for all, that the common affairs of mankind are matter to think about as well as to feel about. What distinguishes what we Call a 'good' statesman and a 'public-spirited' citizen from their less truly political colleagues is not that they have warmer feelings—there are as many affectionate sons and loving husbands among the tools of politics as among the elect—but the fact that by a resolute use of the related powers of intellect and imagination they have been able to raise their feelings on to a higher plane and to face great issues with a mind attuned, not to the familiar appeal of hearth and home, but to the grander and more difficult music of humanity. . . . If we would amend the world around us—and it is in sore need of amendment—our first duty is to eschew falsehood and to follow truth in our own lives, in our thoughts and actions."

It is a question, in short, of saving our own souls and at the same time gaining the whole world; the modern man may: lot lit very sure what his soul is, but there is only one way to save it. We may not know what is the meaning of the history which we are making, but like still another writer and a great man, Viscount Morley, we may be sure that "none at least of those who bear foremost names in the history of nations, ever worked aunt lived . . . in the idea that it was no better than solemn comedy: or which a sovereign demiurgus in the stars had cast their parts."

It has been mooted that the College's Silver Jubilee be celebrated next April 17th. It will then be twenty-five years since the first lecture was delivered to eagerly listening students. The date is immediately after the Easter Tournament, which is to be held in Wellington in 1924, and it is hoped that a large gathering of ex-students will be seen, talking over old times and renewing old friendships.