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The Spike or Victoria University College Review September 1924

Free Discussions Club

page 58

Free Discussions Club

The first meeting since the last number was opened by .Miss Annie Smythe, B.A. (V.U.C.), of the Salvation Army, evangelist and converter of the heathen. Miss Smythe gave a somewhat rambling account of her missionary (chiefly financial) experiences in China, which were interesting enough in their way, but hardly suitable for a Free Discussions meeting. Miss Smythe was however a very willing answerer of questions. The Club had the rather unusual experience of opening and closing its proceedings with fervent prayer.

The second meeting was opened by a scholarly and pessimistic paper on "War and Human Nature," delivered by Dr. I. L. G. Sutherland. Dr. Sutherland shattered the notion that evolution advanced along the cul-de-sac that was traversed by the cats of Kilkenny and the great Powers of Europe. Man alone of all the animals made the destruction of his own species a systematic business. Wolf and tiger were not sunken so low that they hunted wolf and tiger. However, man was born to iniquity as sparks fly upwards. Unscrupulous politicians would light "the tinder that lay dormant in the human deeps, and with the advance of science a conflagration would come to their bidding and leave behind a blackened wreckage. Dr. Gibb strained eloquence itself in praise of the paper. He would like to see it printed (which incidentally it will be in the first number of the "New Nation" on November 15th). But he deplored its pessimism. The Labour movement would not be duped by another war to end war. But stronger than the Labour movement was the Church—the Methodist Churches of America particularly. Sundry speakers were dubious as to whether the Church was a reliable brake on pugnacious human nature. War allowed thousands of men to enter into their eternal beatitude earlier than their sanguinest hopes had anticipated. War, moreover, destroyed wealth wholesale, and that undoubtedly would have pleased the writers of the New Testament beyond measure. Dr. Gibb used violent language about war. Professor Hunter deplored the suppression of freedom of thought in the American Universities, and the meeting adjourned.