The Editorial Committee invites contributions, either in prose or verse, on any subject of general interest, from students or officials connected with the College. All literary communications should be addressed to The Editor, Victoria University College, Wellington, Subscriptions are now due, and are payable to Mr. I S, Hjorring, Financial Secretary.

Editorial

I led him into the office. Was he not my friend, who had come to visit me after many days? I pressed him into the easy chair and handed him the editorial Woodbines,

"Presented to 'The Spike,'" I said, "by Sir Robert Stout, ex-Chancellor of the University, in recognition of our long fight for free speech in a perishing community."

He lit one, and I watched the smoke curl delicately upwards. There, thought I, in a fit of the higher Pantheism, there, but for some strange twist of the Elan Vital, some hidden working of the Infinite, goes the Editor of "The Spike." What a thing is destiny! How subtle! How tactless! And the words of Anatole France, I hat grave jester, recurred to my mind: "In life we must make all due allowance for chance. Chance, in the last resort, is God."

The silence was broken by my friend. He flicked the ash of his cigarette on to the expensive Turkey carpet.

"There are few things in this worst of all possible worlds," he said, "more depressing than the spectacle of modern democracy in action."

"Your remark," I answered, "is not a profoundly original one. It has been made before by thinkers of so diverse a mental constitution as Dean Inge, Professor B. E. Murphy, and Mr. Horace McCormick. Nevertheless I agree with you."

"The only possible excuse for it," he continued, "is that anything else would be, if one can conceive it, distinctly worse."

"I am an old man," I said. "I have walked these halls for many years now. I have seen men and women come, and I have page 2 seen them depart. I have talked in my time to men like the Rev. B. H. Ward and Mr. Jas. Brook, and I have sat at the feet of many professors of varied attainments. There is nothing I have esteemed higher in my not—shall I say?—unhappy sojourn here than the privilege of producing "The Spike," and long sitting in its editorial chair is beginning to wear my trousers a bit thin. And casting a regretfully retrospective eye over my experience, and the perhaps inadequate wisdom I have gleaned in the course of it, I think J may say that I have arrived at the conclusion that you are right.

"And, assuming that you are right, does not the onus lie on us (no pun intended, I assure you) to do what we can to help this stricken thing, to oil the wheels and pick up the nuts and tickle the innards of this broken down tin Lizzie? (You will understand of course that this mechanical metaphor refers to modern Democracy; some philosophers have lost an enormous amount of sweat—I may instance the late Herbert Spencer—in proving that society is an organism; but we live in an age of machines, and our language must adjust itself accordingly). You will agree with me, I think, that this is so. (Can I help you to another of these delectable Woodbines?). And if it is so, the place to start is here and the time now. For if Democracy is decrepit outside the College walls, certainly it is in just as bad a state inside—and with far less excuse. For down in the great city that lies at our feet and in the great world that is spread about, the ordinary business man and hardworking politician are far too much engrossed in the trivial round, the daily task (I trust I have the quotation right), the absorbing problems of doing their fellowman out of that extra penny that makes the great captain of industry, or holding up Comrade Massey at the imminent risk of ruining the Imperial Conference—we can understand it, I say, if these worthy people, the backbone of our polity, have no time to waste in thought on the common problems that beset our community and the world a like; we can understand, and even sympathies in their touching dependence for their opinions on the environment of their commercial milieu and the eminently respectable pages of our three great representatives of the fourth Estate—I refer of course, to the daily papers, with the sentiments and elevating tone of which you are no doubt thoroughly familiar. But we who seek knowledge, who tend the sacred light of learning, who suck from the eternal orange of wisdom some few drops of its ever-refreshing sweetness—is there the same excuse for us? Do we not turn aside from the search, dim willfully the light, fling away the fruit as unprofitable skin and pips, when we let go the principles which should direct our corporate lives, when we sink back on our finite selves, when we prepare to stew in the juice of our own limited personalities—in short, when we lose sight of the Eternal Verities of our existence?"

"You are becoming rather involved," replied my friend, "but I think I perceive enough of the drift of your harangue to disagree with it profoundly. I gather that you are indulging in another outburst at the expense of the modern university student, with special reference to V.U.C. You are entirely wrong. What chance has the average student here of taking any interest, much less any part in what is usually termed College life? (I hate the canting phrase, which smells of well-meaning advisers to youth, but it is the only convenient one.) What earthly chance has he, conditions being what they are, to do anything beyond waste his time at page 3 lectures as compelled by statute and then go home and make it. up by frenzied work before dropping into bed and sleeping off the orgy?"

"If the average university student only pulled himself together——" I burst in.

"Pardon me, allow me to continue into a new paragraph. Let us get down if possible to fundamentals. What is our University? We haven't one; there is a tall and genial comrade called Norris down at the Farmers' Institute, and another called Macmillan Brown elsewhere in New Zealand, who I am told, in the capacity of Chancellor loses his temper at Capping ceremonies; there is also a body of septuagenarians called the Senate which spends its time snubbing a body of irrepressible irresponsibles known as the Board of Studies; there is also a body of erudite examiners scattered over the world whom the Senate pays to ask idiotic questions, and two or three thousand students who attempt to answer them; and this, I believe, is held to constitute something in the nature of a University. It dispenses bits of paper known as Diplomas, for which you pay one guinea, three guineas, four, seven, eight. up to twenty or so guineas, the amount of cash varying according to the amount of educations you have received. When you have got one of these things you are educated; and if you are a lawyer, you can start in at your disreputable work with a clear conscience and legal authority. So much for your University. Have I described it accurately?"

"Tolerably, but——"

"One moment. There are also institutions known as colleges. We have one in Wellington called Victoria University College. The name calls up a vast body of associations and memories to some. people, and they rather glory in having spent a good deal of time there. For the present I neither approve of, nor blame them for this. We all have our weak points. There are others with whom, I believe, it is quite otherwise. I may have no wish to approve, but I do not blame them in the slightest."

"Your heresy is as disgusting as it is unblushing," I said.

"It may be so, but kindly restrain yourself till I have finished my exposition. There are about seven hundred—ah—we will call them "students" attending this institution, this Victoria University College. Of these a vast proportion are condemned to work all day. How in the name of common-sense are these unfortunates to do their work, to spend a certain amount of time at meals, lectures, exams, and the process of study, and still take part in corporate College life? There are only a limited number of ways in which to pick up a living, and though we may envy the sparrows or our professors, most of us are compelled to earn it. The student, like the profiteer, can't serve God and Mammon. Under the circumstances, can you blame him for serving Mammon? There is another class of students, who spend part of their time at the Training College over the hill at Kelburn. I have never been able to discover that they do anything much there, from the accounts of those of my friends who have experienced the life, but that is of purely digressive interest. The great majority come to V.U.C. They come here for a couple of hours every day to crowd out the English and Psychology lecture-rooms, and clutter up the corridors, and then in one or two years they depart, having been of no earthly use to the College, nor the College, to them. I page 4 understand that on their departure they are experts in education. Well, it isn't their fault. What is the use of trying to do any better? Finally, there is a limited class of plutocratic students, who manage to scrape a living without working all day for it. Some of these spend the day instead in concentrated swat, and consequently earn thousands of pounds in scholarships and prizes. If they do nothing else, I despise them for it, though no doubt the feeling is largely founded on envy. There is finally a small body of students, drawn from each of these classes, some of whom can afford the time and some not, who run the place, who make up the clubs, the notoriety or respectability—usually the former—of which occasionally penetrate beyond the walls; whose faces in fact beam with sociability and loving kindness, and who even treat title profs, with a certain amount of pity and tolerance. These then, I call the true students. They are few out of our seven hundred, and to them my admiration and my love go out—but taking everything into consideration, would I use harsh words about the others? Would I even gaze at them with distaste? Mr. Jas. Brook, I understand, has a very low opinion of the modern student: but in spite of his vast experience, herein I disagree with him."

I remained sunk moodily quiescent in the office-chair during this address. It was all so horribly plausible. But something gave way in my brain, and I leapt up suddenly and foamed at the mouth.

"No!" I cried, pointing a quivering forefinger at my friend. "No! You are wrong! You are one shameful mass of hideous immorality!"

He blinked in some alarm.

"These are hard words, brother," he said. "But why?"

"Because you are a pessimist, and a pessimist is one who weakly or sardonically acquiesces in the existing state of affairs, however miserable, and one who so acquiesces bears all the marks of immorality. You are the prophet of the status quo, which is another name for the Golden Calf. You are false to the ideals of your youth. Remember the fate of the prophets of Baal—remember the scene by Kishon's brook! Verily you are damned. I wish you luck of the sword and hell fire. May it burn brightly!"

But I recollected that after all he was my friend. Like me, he had once been a young and unspoiled undergraduate, with shining eyes and a white soul. There was still a chance for his salvation. I must explain myself.

"Granting your premises," I said, "I still refuse, though I have been perilously near doing it, to admit your deductions. Let us go into this business further."

At this moment there was a cautious tap on the door, and the Sub-Editor entered bearing a single envelope on a silver salver.

"How the contributions keep pouring: in," I murmured, and tore it open. It was as I had feared. My friend raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Another slightly erotic sonnet from Hughie Mac," I said. "How the dear boy does turn them out? Have you a coin of any description?" I spun the ha'penny he tendered, and then poised the unfortunate poem above me. It hung on the air a moment, wavered, and gently floated down into the waste-paper basket.

"'Twas ever thus," I said, wiping away a tear.

page 5

"Let us go into this business further," I resumed. "I will not add to your skilful analysis of the elements of College life, nor will 1 enlarge on the defects of Democracy. Democracy at its worst, as Oscar Wilde remarked so truly in his glorification of the Soul of Man, means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. We have never yet fallen so low as that at V.U.C, though according to Upton Sinclair this seems to be a pretty common experience in the universities of the United states of America. Here, with all our drawbacks, we can at least say what we like, and think what we like, except when a war-fever is on. And this is really the great fundamental; in the last analysis, this is the only thing that matters. This is the fact on which we have to hang when everything seems to be going to the dogs wilh unprecedented rapidity.

"I gaze, like you, on the spectacle of our seven hundred students. Like you I have meditated with despair on their degeneration, on our hopeless displays of idiocy at Capping functions, on our clubs which ought to be ten times as big as they are, on our Student Relief appeals which are passed by with an utter lack of imagination and sympathy by nine students out of ten, of our 'Spike' which sells no more than two hundred and fifty copies (cruelest blow of all). I have considered, for instance, the annual general meetings of our Students' Association and our method of electing responsible officers. is then anything that is more effective in shaking your faith in the efficacy of a university education? Is there anything that can give you more understanding of the feelings of the perfect bureaucrat when he is faced by the spectacle of a people to be governed? Is there anything except the Parliament of New Zealand that so shatters what confidence you ever had in the virtues of representative government? When you see it, can you blame Comrade Massey for occasionally playing: the autocrat? Would you not sympathise with Comrade Martin-Smith if he sometimes followed our distinguished Premier's example? I have wondered what is wrong with it all. And I agree with you that the main fault lies in the system. At least, sometimes I agree with you (I was just falling into pessimism). And sometimes 1 disagree, and think that the fault lies with the people (which may he greater pessimism than ever). I will put it like this—granted our University system in New Zealand is not far removed from the thoroughly bad, granted that the disabilities under which V.U.C. labours are peculiarly disheartening to us, nevertheless could we not do better if we tried? Institutions are at best only institutions, as they are at worst. How delightful it would be to make a clean sweep of dozens of them! What joy to attack the Senate with a battering-ram! But indeed what then? There was a good deal of the right stuff in old Walt Whitman, I fancy, a little poem of whose I had us written down when you entered, as a text for that page or two of platitudinous moralising known as an Editorial.

What indeed have I in common with them? or what with the destruction of them?

he says; and goes on his charmingly breezy American way Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States inland and seaboard,

And In the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large that dents the water

Without edifices or rulers or trustees or any argument,

The institution of the dear love of comrades.

page 6

"I do not know precisely what the Mannahatta may be; but if we could only get hold of old Walt's spirit and spread it round a bit, I venture to suggest there would be a vast improvement in these things we bemoan together. The trouble is, I don't exactly know how to get hold of it, or how to spread it round; and I suspect that talking about it puts it further off than ever.

"We might still do something with institutions if we had a free hand. For one thing, it strikes me that the College has grown far too big. True, we are only seven hundred; but we are seven hundred in a very inconvenient way. There is on the whole practically no communication between the individual members of the seven hundred. A College joke, for instance, is now a virtual impossibility. Once upon a time it was possible to run a page of Answers to Correspondents in 'The Spike,' and everybody roared with wicked laughter. But do the same thing now, and how many people will read the page with anything but a feeling of mild boredom—perhaps more than mild? I do not insist, of course, that anybody ever reads any part of "The Spike' with any other feeling; but the illustration will serve. I know that not a sob was heard on its disappearance from the last issue—well, of course, there was P. J. Smith, but he is by way of being a humorist himself, and no doubt had a fellow feeling. Yes, the place is far too big for the mutual interchange of views and personalities. And how many students, again, can get to know their professors? I do not suggest, of course, that all of them are worth knowing; but doubtless down at the bottom of your heart you have a tender feeling for some hoary old bird, who has stood up manfully dispensing learning these many years. There are many of them personally that I love like brothers, or at least I feel sure I should if only there were opportunities and they would let me.

"Now does not it strike you that if we had plenty of money and when I say plenty I do not mean a few measly thousand—we could build three or four really tine and useful residential colleges, where our sadly scattered seven hundred could congregate and live and really begin to know one another? This suggestion, I am afraid, is a rather hackneyed one, but in it, it seems to me, really lies the crux of the question that faces us so far as College life is concerned. It would not solve our formal educational problem, but at least it would provide the setting in which far greater things might be done. We ourselves will never, it is safe to say, live to see the perfect milieu of modern and reformed Oxford or Cambridge transplanted to the Old Clay Patch—but still we may make a beginning. How many of us are there not thirsting for education at a University?—and I mean education and University when I say the words. But we have got to think together, and the first necessity for that is living together. With regard to learning, the 'wisdom' that shines so brightly on our College scroll, I will refrain from elaborating my own crude ideas; instead I recommend you to peruse with the greatest attention an article that will appear in the September 'Spike,' by a graduate of the University of New Zealand who has certainly distinguished himself. I mention no names."

"Well," said my friend, "'we have both talked a good deal, but T do not see that we have got anywhere. You accused me of pessimism, but if this is the alternative you offer, pessimism deepens. Old Plato built a very nice Republic, and no doubt could page 7 nail on an annex to contain your ideal University. But what I want to know is, what are you going to do in the meantime? If you are banking on all these improvements, your enthusiasms are going to come down with a very pronounced thud at some not far off date."

"Miserable sceptic!" I thundered; "have you never read the aphorisms of that brilliant young Frenchman, Jean Coetau? 'A young man must not invest in safe securities.' Ponder that, and then dare to throw your foolish quibbles at my head!"

"Alas!" he answered, "the same aphorist also said 'The public asks questions. It ought to be answered by works, not manifestos.' Where are your works?"

"Ah!" said I, feeling rather damned, "you begin to probe uncomfortably. But yet let us take comfort; we may produce our works. Remember, it is our Silver Jubilee next year. I will thing a last quotation at you, which 1 have been saving up a long time for 'The Spike.' We may, as sons of men, be poor stuff, but at least can we not be

One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield"?

"You are getting dangerously Victorian," he said, "which is a bad thing for a young man; but still, there may be something in what you say. Are you coming down to tea?"