Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 23. September 20, 1976

Salient and Mao Tse-Tung

Salient and Mao Tse-Tung

Dear Sir,

The cover of the last issue of Salient was certainty impressive, and a good deal more artistic than usual. After beginning with such a tribute, if that is what is was, to Mao, why then did you feel the need to excuse yourself to your readers for printing it? If you, and your stuff are concerned that Salient is in fact "a magazine dominated by the left and not concerned with students" then it is up to you to make it more relevant. If however you consider that the death of such a great justified our paying a tribute to him, then it should not be necessary for your to apologise to the readers.

Indeed the editorial did merely "pay lip service" to Mao, when the cover of the paper suggested to me that there would be a feature article inside, telling the more apathetic and less well informed majority (myself included) some fact, not propaganda, about what Chines owes to Mao and what we owe him respect for achieving.

In such an article as the editorial the tribute which was begun lost any impact, even [ unclear: sincererity], by your not expressing your respect of him without the preceding apology for your belief.

Jillian Moss.

We heard about Mao Tse Tung's death late last Thursday night. As you probably know Salient goes up to the printers on Friday. There was precious little time in which to attempt any feature article, so we decided instead to run a cove photo and a short instead to run a cover photo and a short comment on the inside. This week we have [ unclear: printed] a more substantial article - Ed.