"SPIKE"

It is with a pleasurable feeling of wonderment that one realises after some years of student life the significance that the title, "Spike"—or, more correctly, "The Spike"—has gained in one's mind. In one's "fresher" year it seemed merely an eccentric and rather pitiful production—what might be expected from one's eccentric and rather pitiful seniors, a magazine that came a very bad second when compared with that dear, dull, old school magazine to which one had become so closely attached.

Gradually, as the years have passed, as the links which bound one to "the school" have gradually been severed, that title—interesting fossil of a superseded slang—has gained increasingly numerous associations. The row of "Spikes" on the bookshelves has now become the storehouse of a thousand memories—it enshrines for ever the idiosyncrasies of all those Gilbertian College figures, it has immortalised a hundred priceless tit-bits of College scandal, it has recorded—not unkindly—one's splutterings at debates or one's efforts on the football field. And if one has become exceeding patriotic, one has certainly delved into older "Spikes" or into "The Old Clay Patch," one has rollicked to the lilt of Seaforth Mackenzie and S. Eichelbaum, one has chuckled over May Joyce's caricatures and Harold Miller's accompanying verses, one has read with appreciation the early victory of Eileen Duggan, one has glowed to read the defiant, courageous editorials of the giants of years ago.

Yet one fears that with the growth of our College there has come a very real danger that "Spike" may lose the prestige it naturally enjoyed in an institution of closer contacts and less diverse interests. Young students, yours is the task of supporting your magazine, to you has been entrusted the charge of a richly-dowered heirloom—no less. Without your literary and financial aid "Spike" must become merely a dull official publication draining the resources of the Association. Better complete extinction than that fate! October will see the publication of the last bi-annual "Spike." Students, a long line of predecessors look to you expectantly. Your future life beseeches you, imploring some memento of your College days. The Past and the Future, fail them not!