Editorial

"They defend the universities and academic bodies on the ground that, but for them, good work would be so universal that the world would become clogged with masterpieces to an extent that would reduce it to an absurdity. Good sense would rule over all, and merely smart or clever people would be unable to earn a living."—Notebooks of Samuel Butler.

This writing of Editorials is a Devil of a Job. The regular filling of a certain space with edifying little moral dissertations would, after a certain stage, one hazards, pall on a parson; and when one has to run round the little cage of one's mind, and taken a look out of the four corners, and written down the result, one is at a loss what to say next. One stands in the middle and gazes at the ceiling; one turns one's stare upon the floor; and then, having cursed one's inadequacy to discuss the greater problems of time and space (even if one knew what they were), having beaten one's brain in despair against the inexorable iron bars of one's limitations, having considered handing the job over to the Sub-editor and recoiled in alarm from one's own morbid imagination, having thought of and discarded as hopeless all the usual things, one hits on something more usual, more worked-over, more completely jaded than anything else, and recurs to the delicate subject of University Reform.

It is in the air, inescapable, inevitable. The rumours have penetrated even to the Minister of Education, and he has announced his intention of appointing a Royal Commission to look into the matter. Auckland demands a revolution, Christchurch is positive something must be done; Professor T. A. Hunter, standard-bearer in many a bloody fight, seizes once more the eagle, and with the glad cry of one who has followed the Emperor from the Alps to Moscow, pre page 2 pares to lead yet again the legions into the thickest of the fray. Even Otago is of the tentative opinion that something might be done in the way of getting together some time and discussing ways and means of adjusting a few inconsiderable points. So things must be moving. Well, it's time. Paralysis is never a very advantageous way of living, and in the case of an institution, better be dead than paralysed. And in the case of the University of New Zealand paralysis has been threatening the body for some time. The action taken by Auckland in demanding practically a separate university is merely a foretaste of what must inevitably have happened in the more progressive centres if there were no prospect of the present system being changed by other means.

What is now proposed, of course, though it is not yet enshrined in definite official proceedings, is that a Royal Commission shall be appointed, including as its chairman a man front abroad with wide actual administrative experience in University matters, with an unbiassed modern outlook; and that this Commission shall overhaul thoroughly the fabric of the University, and make such proposals for the rebuilding as it thinks proper. And there is not a great deal of doubt that, in the light of what has been done in London and South Africa, the result will be a pretty complete remodelling. Certainly the stupid complete control of the Senate as at present constituted must go; and certainly the individual colleges with their staffs must get a much greater control of the actual work of teaching. Independence, of course, is a dangerous experiment, as conservative thought has pointed out regularly all through history. We may just as well recognise this; but recognise at the same time that there is one thing more dangerous, and that is death. Sooner a bonfire, sooner a brief burst of glory in a flying skyrocket of a career than the deadly inanition of the self-satisfied. For there is nothing more deadly than self-satisfied pedantry. As a matter of fact, however, there is not likely to be such a blaze. With one or two drastic fundamental reforms, the rest will come in due course and naturally, if without any great excitement. Let us get rid of that paralysing shade, the present University of New Zealand, that monument of inefficiency and uselessness; and we shall be well on the road to salvation. As things are, we are damned; we might seem to be damned utterly.

The opponents of such a reform urge with tiresome iteration that the change will ruin the value of the New Zealand degree. It is a specious argument; it reduces education to the level of a monopoly-product, a thing of examination and approval by a badly-run board of management, totally divorced from the realities of teaching and study. A degree has not, never has had, and we hope never will have any value (except, perhaps, a small commercial value) apart from the intrinsic worth of character of those who bear it—their tolerance, their freedom from cant, their refusal to truckle to the idols of any market-place, their love of truth for its own sake, their positive achievement in learning and creation. And the reputation of a University for helping to produce men and women of this sort is the only thing that will give value to any degree.

It is well to reflect, however, that a mere change in the mechanics of government is far from salvation in itself. It opens up a road, but unless we students tread the road with independence and judgment, the change may as well not be made. After all, it is possible to run a University under the most disheartening dis page 3 advantages, official and unofficial, provided the spirit be there; bur be the spirit absent and all else is but beating of the wind. We must have liberty to develop our individuality with all the breadth and excellence that in us lies, but if we have no individuality, and are satisfied with the lack of it, is liberty, after all, so great a boon? it is one of the worst of all mistakes to regard a means as an end. Even as it is, those connected with Victoria College do not utilise all the influence that is in their grasp. It is not of actual students we speak here, but of graduates, men and women with University experience who should know what a University stands for in 'the community, and who should do their utmost to see that whatever ideals are possible are followed fearlessly and tirelessly. The Court of Convocation of the Wellington University District consists of ail graduates of the University whose names are on the books of Victoria College—and Victoria has now something like seven hundred graduates. This Court is entitled to meet and discuss matters of University interest, and to make representations to the Senate. It elects two representatives to the Senate. It elects four members of the College Council. It presumably, if it had the will, could be an influence of considerable importance in University government. As things stand, its influence is nil. The average attendance at the annual meeting (other meetings being almost, unknown), which elects its officers, is, we are credibly informed, about five or six. There was a meeting held in the last vacation to discuss the question of University reform, and there were as many as twenty-four present. The excitement among the older members at this unprecedented phenomenon was immense. Could anything be more pitiful? If there is one. thing future graduates can do for the name of their College, it is to put fresh life and blood into this feebly anaemic institution. We have no wish in the world to import the dead-hand influence of alumni, which is only too apparent in some American colleges; far sooner the present state of things, anomalous and inadequate as it is. But a strong backing of graduates, speaking with weight as an official body, would surely have some influence where University matters are concerned. They could surely hope to spread the feeling, even in Wellington, that there is such a thing as a University, as University teaching, as University culture (we hope), as—is it too foolish to dream of?—a distinctively University way of looking at things, a way of tolerance, of knowledge, of broad-minded and practical idealism. As things stand, nothing could be more divorced from reality than this enticing dream—yet dreams have materialised before now. We ask all graduates-to-be, therefore, to note one factor which can be made of a quite considerable importance in the future.

There is another thing which this time concerns all students, but particularly those students, if there be any, who have some interest in the College as an institution with a very real influence on their lives, and not a mere depot for the purchase of so much professional training. It is the question of Student Representation on the Council, an idea that was discussed and disapproved some years ago by (we think) the then Executive of the Students' Association, and which has been again brought forward this year in all seriousness as a practicable and desirable thing. At the meeting of Convocation before referred to the matter was discussed to a certain extent (the shock being so great for one earnest member that he could only describe it as an attempt at Soviet government), and was then page 4 postponed to another meeting. Difficulties—and quite serious difficulties—can doubtless be raised to the proposal-for instance, who is to appoint whatever representative may be allowed? assuming such representation, would it be of any practical use?—but it is for students to discuss the matter fully and seriously, and themselves come to some conclusion. It may be remarked that in the most conservative State of the Australian Commonwealth, legislation has been passed recently bearing on this very subject. By the Melbourne University Act, 1923, the students of Melbourne University elect two representatives to a council of thirty-one, the franchise being confined to students of twenty-one and over. It is proposed in Wellington to have one representative on a council of sixteen, with some such qualification as to the right of voting as in Melbourne. Of the justice of the principle involved we think there can be no doubt. The student body is an important part of the University; historically, the students practically were the University; they are intimately concerned ultimately in whatever is done, and what concerns all, it is at least the English theory, should be considered by all. Whether such consideration is really possible it is not for us to decide here (as we are not writing a leader for the daily paper), but there is the problem, one of importance, and if we as students do not take a hand in its solving, certainly we deserve little consideration in whatever solution is found.

And then there is that most important matter of all, the matter of a residential hostel. It is good to know that a further step has been taken, that the Students' Association is working with the Graduates' Association, and that the Council has appointed a subcommittee to consult on plans and prospects. Yet we doubt if a great number of students are interested in the matter, and whether all the agitation, all the thinking and the spade-work, is not being done by a very few, enthusiastic but ill-supported. The question was made the main point of the editorial of last year's September "Spike"; and we are reluctant to insist on it at great length here. Yet if one thing is certain, it is that there can be no common life of thought or sympathy among students without some common place of living. The casual contacts of hall and corridors are of small use. Clubs embrace but a limited circle. Yet the work they have done, the contact they have provided, is proof positive of the good that must ensue from a means to closer contact still. Among all the limitations of our work as a University there is none that can be so easily and successfully overcome as this, given the will. Given the will. And with this in mind, it needs no excuse for insisting on its importance to the point of weariness. We may perhaps quote Newman:—

"A University is, according to the usual designation, an Alma Mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill. I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called University which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a University which had no professors or examination:, at all. but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away, as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the better discipline of the intellect—mind. I do not say which is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be to good and idleness an intolerable mischief—but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, enlarging page 5 the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that University which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun."

The passage was written in 1852; seventy years have not altered its force. And it is a force that applies both to our own particular problems and the problems of University government in general. We may reflect that the reason why in the first years of V.U.C. a better, broader-minded, more truly educated average of student was turned out (at least, so we are told and must perforce believe) was that the number of students being so much smaller the lack of experience of living together was to a certain extent offset by a close and wide acquaintance among the few, if one may so express it, a knowledge of what was best in one's neighbours from common work in an uphill struggle. Now our numbers are unwieldy; there is no common struggle; and the only thing that will get a reasonably large body of students thinking on the same thing is a strenuously packed meeting. And even then thought may not be offensively apparent. But at least there is a common aim.

Even with the individual, it seems, thought is but an occasional accident. It is no wonder. The type of boys and girls who are yearly shovelled by the hundred into the colleges is not fit material from which to build up a University. Mark Pattison and Huxley were very frank on the same question in the English and Scottish Universities in the seventies of last century. We have the experience in our own College. To one who gets ever so little below the surface, the general illiteracy and immaturity of our first-year students is amazing. And it is not confined to the first year. One cannot blame them—entirely; they are victims of a system. They come here (as someone remarked) with their mother's milk hardly dry upon their lips. And they have to be taught the elements. It is profoundly discouraging that such a system should have sprung into being; it is more discouraging to think that there is no prospect of its ending. In this respect at least we are bound hand and foot to a vicious and spurious ideal. The result is seen in the general attitude to things which may possibly seem of very little importance, but the principles of which in reality lie at the very root of our corporate being. An instance is the Extravaganza, the discussion of which in our last number, it seems, created a certain amount of scandal. Another is the criticism that has been levelled at the "Spike" of late years for its own critical attitude towards a good number of things. Some one gets a grievance, someone feels himself a saviour of orthodox society, and it is only too easy to start a mad and quite ignorant stampede against any aspect of College life that seems offensive. The astounding way in which the membership of the Debating Society rose from 65 to 300 within a week at the end of July, and the amount of pure silliness shown at the subsequent special general meeting, illustrate our point. Of course, it is the usual failing of democracies, and it will require a good deal more education (that panacea) than we students have at present to cure it. The "Spike" undoubtedly has plenty of grievances—admittedly it finds some aspects of College life offensive; but it has always attempted to level its criticism sincerely and on reasonable grounds. And we cannot think that what has been said at any time has shocked anyone with either a sense of proportion or a sense of humour. These things, however, are peculiarly absent in a page 6 democracy, and particularly so in a half-educated one. So far the cure has proved elusive to social philosophers, and certainly we have none to offer. We can but hope that with increased opportunities for wide intercourse among students, with, possibly, some sort of reform in primary and secondary education—included in which may be mentioned emancipation from the narrow and deadening examination that the University itself imposes—there will be the beginnings of improvement. But it is possible to be excessively optimistic—an American surgeon was saying the other day that New Zealand had the finest stamp of men, physically and mentally, in the world. We demur at the mentally. As long as New Zealand remains in the backwash of thought that she occupies at present, so long will she be fettered by the almost incredible conservatism which pervades the minds of ninety-nine hundredths of her people; a conservatism that begins by inspiring disgust and finishes by inducing an intense weariness. The duty of the University is plain; the difficulty is to know how to carry it out.

There is, we believe, some sort of guide. We of Victoria have already a tradition that is very precious. In tradition in itself there is danger that cannot be overrated, but there are some things above time, a permanent experience, part of what is highest and best among the things of the spirit. They are things hard to define; they consist in the liberty of the soul, an eagerness of the eyes, a readiness to discern truth and beauty and fellowship. Beneath the froth of the Jubilee there was a strong foundation, one was glad to think, in the recognition of this; and one would fain think, too, that this recognition will remain, firm and unchanging, apart from and beyond all such celebrations, at the heart of the life of our University; a thing that is part of the breath and the blood, the knowledge and the feeling, of all the men and women who are destined in the years and the centuries of the future to take part in and to contribute to her life. It is a tradition that is the beginning of all wisdom, and the crown of all learning; it is a thing truly universal, liberal, humane, beyond the force of circumstance; a thing of the imagination, a thing that is in and transcends all poetry and history and philosophy. And it seems sometimes that if we have sustained this tradition we have lived worthily; and that if we have not, life itself is of little account.