Sometime Plunket Medal Winner Makes Good.

Alfie Knows His Stuff.

"Smad" went to the first ordinary meeting of the Free Discussions Club last Wednesday with sad memories of the club's long-gone glamour, and came away rejoicing. A large gap in Victoria University college life was being filled—the F.D.C. was coming into its own.

With the engrossing subject of "Race Prejudice" before it and the inevitable Mr. Brown in the chair, a rather assymetrical Mr. Katz beside him, and an enthusiastic assemblage of about sixty, each provided with notepaper, the meeting opened. Mr. Brown explained the new system of discussing—a speaker presents a case for about a half hour, then the people present divide into groups of eight to ten for further discussion and illumination; the speaker of the evening and the chairman going from group to group, then for the final ten minutes the spokesman of each group asks questions (of the speaker) and the speaker winds up.

To say that the experiment was proved to perfection would be too much, but one felt that the spirit of discussion was more free and that the students were thinking about the subject.

Mr. Katz, with his known methodological skill, divided his thesis into three parts. Firstly he endeavoured to show that there is no justification for a belief in racial superiority, demonstrating this by three contentions: (1)That there is no such thing as a pure race; (2) that even in so far as there is racial differentiation, no hierarchy of relative superiority can be established; (3) that all races are equipotential in intelligence.

Then the speaker gave some of the rationalisations that are made to justify racial prejudice—physical characteristics, language, clothes, customs, morals—as showing differences upon which one or other race claims superiority.

One was struck by the aptness of illustration used by Mr. Katz. "As blonde as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, as moral as Goering;" staple-shooting niggers in Alabama; negroes in tramcars; Maori marriage; Livingstone's horror of the white man's paleness, shaking hands with Hindus, a blackboard illustration of some point—all now remain as highlights of the presentation of an intensely practical issue.

Finally, the speaker endeavoured to show the fundamental reasons for racial hatred—that they were economic and cultural—irrational, due to the stereotypes of race prejudice which found emotional release in hatred of one's enemies.

Then the students broke up into some five or six groups and "got going. "Smad" was present in one of these circles—some women and men and a lot of hot air—but doing something—endeavouring to understand the issue and see its practical significance. It was truly heartening. As one great thinker has said, "It doesn't matter where you're going, provided that you go hard."

The ubiquitous Brook made a break in the bandying of—think of word —No; well, he did, and with the students reassembled and Mr. Katz just having got under way, the meeting had to close.

Yes; it was a good meeting, and "Smad" hopes that the Club can produce some more like it, for its own sake and for the sake of the College.