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We are students at a university. A university is an institution designed primarily towards the propagation of knowledge. Knowledge is a guide and condition of action. To ensure correct action should be the aim of a university education.
Some courses are more obviously practical than others. A student of Dairy Science Is less likely to proclaim the doctrine of Dairy Science for Dairy Science's sake than an Arts student is to hoist the banner of art for art's sake. But it is with this less obviously practical knowledge—this art, culture or social knowledge that 'Spike' is chiefly concerned.
Art is the most general and the highest form of learning. If philosophy is the Proof of the wine of knowledge, then art is the overproof. But there is a danger of dilution with the water of falsehood and conventional dogma during distillation. There is a danger of art becoming lost in the clouds of unreality, and Antaeus-like Losing its strength.
How does our university education meet the demands of society today? Is it a desirable accomplishment to be able to write Latin prose? Should Russian be taught without reforming society itself. Yet since it is also true that a change in society pre-supposes education, we have a right to expect the best that the fighting spirit of the students can procure.
Again it may with some justice be objected that we students should not throw Stones, even if they have been given us for bread. Too many students gain degrees At the expense of their education. Though veritable encyclopaediæ concerning West-Germanic doubling or the sex-life of the Algae, they are shy in public, have no ideas on fundamental issues, lack a philosophy to co-ordinate their knowledge—are hopeless as leaders.
Today when even the most conservative foresee 'some change,' and when leading Intellects all over the world are unmistakeably revolutionary in their outlook, it is more important than ever that the people should not be disappointed when they look to universities for leaders armed with the necessary theory.
What is to be done?
We will strike a blow for progress, not by sitting in splendid isolation on the hill High above the wordly city like the gods on Mt. Olympus,-not merely by pursuing Some single study to the exclusion of all else, but by becoming acqauainted with as Many people as possible, being interested in a wide field of study outside our specialty, working in factories during vacations or perhaps identifying ourselves with some movement in the city. Then as our ideas extend and co-ordinate, we will experience the sensations once known as religious conversion, where the mysteries which once tor
Armed with this theory and with the imagination and learning to envisage a better order of things to fan our ardour for progress, we must endeavour to align ourselves with those forces in the community which are moving towards progress, and fight those which uphold the conservation of effete or evil institutions, or who wish to burden suffering humanity with fresh shackles. Discoverers in the world of art and social questions must fight for the recognition of their discoveries with the same ardour as the pioneers in science and medicine have shown in the past. We must risk the slander of those whose interest is not in the spreading of the truth, our ardour must survive the chilling pessimism of the unbeliever, we must brave the ignorant attacks of over-zealous 'patriots,' we must pursue the line we know to be right, even when, as in Germany, the ranting of members of parliament is replaced by the bullets of secret police.
The tone of student thought at the present time is decidedly encouraging. More and more students are at last learning that their task is not merely to interpret the world but to change it.
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression. Accordingly it is to literature that we must look . . . if we hope to discover the inward thoughts of a generation.
Writing his book, Breakdown, several years ago, Robert Briffault attacked what he Called 'vulgarian individualism':—
In very much the same manner as predatory individualism does not produce things for their own sake, but for the sake of profits, so vulgarian individualism is incapable of rejoicing in things for their own sake. It subordinates every form of gratification to the display of that gratification to itself and to others. Its pleasures are a form of the violent assertion of its success . . . . The vulgarian is not so much anxious to enjoy himself as to persuade himself and others that he is enjoying himself. He may be seen trying to be gay, trying to be drunk, trying to be dissipated . . .
Bourgeois writers early realised this. The very titles of their works mirrored their Views"—" The Waste Land; Those Barren Leaves; Told by an Idiot (Rose Macaulay); Rejected Guest (Aldington). The nemesis of disillusion and cynicism was and still is the most favoured of the Muses. Here and there we find a feeble attempt to combat it by a portrayal of individual victories over the hollowness of life (e.g. The Rains Came).
What, however, have been the main reactions of bourgeois artists to the cultural decay of our day? Firstly there is the deification of the individual. The individual is abstracted from the social environment, there is a flight from reality to mysticism, to infinite and absolute sources of intelligence and wisdom, to crime, to pornography. The heroes of this literature are isolated dreamers, neurotics, thieves, prostitutes, Police sleuths, hooligans. So we haveUlysses, Eyeless in Gaza, Marcel Proust, the Welter of detective fiction, sex fiction (such a book as Margueritte's La Garconne reflects perfectly the sex-cult of modern society), and the pullulating witty satirist-poets who are so particularly noticeable in French literature— Jacob, Luebeck, Morand, Pellerin, Soupault . . . . Co-ordinate with this went the view of the mechanical man of the future, the cipher, the robot, the view so perfectly expressed in Brave New World. Never was the intellectual's refusal to bear witness to the real human Struggle of his age so clearly demonstrated. We need another Carlyle to scourge his Contemporaries, the Carlyle who wrote—
In good truth, if many a sickly and sulky Byron, or Byronet, glooming over the Woes of existence, and how unworthy God's Universe is to have so distinguished a resi
dent, could transport himself into the patched coat and sooty apron of a Sheffield blacksmith, made with a strange feelings and faculties as he, made by God Almighty one as he was, —it would throw a light on much for him.
One line of reaction hastened a development which had begun in earnest with the French Parnassian school of poetry (this itself had quickly become 'une poesie sterilisee par l'indigence du fond et viciee par les raffinements de la forme')—the development of formalism, not only in literature, but in art generally, and especially, perhaps, in painting.
Modern artists experimenting with form unrelated to anything but the most abstract and therefore attenuated and unconvincing feelings, produce pictures of lines and triangles like jigsaw puzzles, deliberately pursuing form without content, emptying the baby out with the bath. And so we have our Cubism and Vorticism and a multitude of -isms. (H. Levy—Thinking.)
A further comments is added by Apollinaire, a supporter of Cubism, when he writes That 'painters, if they still observe nature, no longer copy it, and carefully avoid the Representation of natural scenes which have either been observed, or reconstructed by study . . . . Art is now austere; and the most touchy senator would find nothing in it requiring censure. Guillaume Apollinaire— It is known that one of the reasons for the success of Cubism in "la bonne societe" is this very austerity.'Il y a.
Parallel with, and twin to this reaction went its opposite— surrealism, the uninterrupted developments of the earliar romanticism, acknowledging as its god Professor sigmund Freud; surrealism— the open page of the imagination, the wider margin of what Freud calls the preconscious mind.' (Herbert Read.) This is another of the supreme gifts of individualism—mystic and escapist works which only the artist himself can understand. The poetry of a Cocteau can be rivalled only by the prose of Finnegan's Wake. Spearman, in his Creative Mind, points out that there was in painting a striking rapport with the work of the schizophrenic insane— For this embarrassing situation two solutions were found. One was for the artists to follow the insane. The other was for the insane to become artists. Both solutions have had their followers— with honours divided.'
Finally, there was a feature which characterized many of the new schools— the refusal to see man any longer in time (see Joyce, Proust; cf. Berkeley Square), a phenomenon of the refusal to see man in his historical setting, to see man in the process of creating himself by creating his environment.
Ezra Pound.
(On the time question see Wyndham Lewis—Time and Western Man; Spender in Penguin New Writing No. 3; Ralph Fox— The Novel and the People, pp. 89-90.)
The whole outlook of bourgeois literature is pessimistic. (The only 'joyous' literature is escapist, and escapism is fundamentally pessimistic because its pleasures are sought not in the real but in the unreal. Hence it never satisfies.) Artistically this takes its rise in the revolt of writers such as Flaubert and Leconte de lisle, who both exercised a tremendous influence on subsequent writers (cf. F. M. Hueffer— Thus to Revisit), against the rapidly-developed industrial capitalism of their time. A dumb fatalism is their answer. Carried on by many writers, notable by Hardy, this has become the main philosophy of bourgeois literature today. Doubt in the morrow and the study of a past idealised by comparison with the dead end of the contemporary world has lead to the overthrow of time, to erudition, obscurity, and the realms of philosophical idealism and mysticism. And this predilection has been enormously strengthened by the steady decay of imperialist culture, by the contradictions of socialised production and capitalist distribution, of scientific progress and ever-recurring wars, and by the growth and the threat of Fascism.
But such is not the complete picture of contemporary literature. Many of the writers mentioned above are without doubt great artists—there are few who would deny this—but by their false view of society, by their distortion of the human personality, and by their frenzied escape into sordid isolation, they must stand down before those writers who, though perhaps not so talented, are preserving the historical association of literature with the people, with man as the creative factor in history, who have seen that 'reality is created by the inexhaustible and intelligent will of man, and that its development will never be arrested' (Gorky); who realise that the corruption which disgusts the bourgeois writer is not the result of a moral disease but of a social system in decay. These are the writers of social realism. Gorky has said—
Myth is invention. To invent means to extract from the sum of a given reality its cardinal idea and embody it in imagery—that is how we got realism. But if to the idea extracted from the given reality we add—completing the idea by the logic of the hypothesis— the desired, the possible, and thus supplement the image, we obtain that romanticism which is at the basis of myth and which is highly beneficial in that it tends to provoke a revolutionary attitude to reality, an attitude that changes the world in a practical way. Problems of Soviet Literature.
The artist must have, as fielding said, 'a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation.' i.e, he must not only know reality as it is, but where it is going. In imperialist society, America has produced more and better artist along this line than England. 'English writers have been slow to abandon the liberal attitude of their predecessors. But the last few years have shown an ever-quickening responsibility. The threat of Fascism has been more persuasive than the traditional poverty with which capitalist society has always rewarded the artist. The ivory towers are draughty nowadays. It's warmer in the street.' (4) Arthur Calder-Marshall in fact No. 4.
Engels wrote to Miss Harkness in
It was certain that this literature could not escape the accusation of dogmatism. That the accusation is untrue is merely proof of the situation portrayed by these writers. To quote Engels again— 'I am far from finding fault,' he tells Miss Harkness. 'with your not having written a pinchbeck Socialist novel, a "tendenz Roman" as we Germans call it, to glorify the social and political views of the author.' The out-look is not preached but appears naturally from the circumstances and the characters themselves. It is not a dogma, but a guide to action based on fact. As Radek puts it:—
Realism does not mean the embellishment or arbitrary selection of revolutionary Phenomena; it means reflecting reality as it is, in all its complexity, in all its contrariety, and not only capitalist reality, but also that other, new reality— the reality of socialism. .
Yet it is true that some writers have written from a dogmatic point of view. Splender has in particular pointed out this fault. Bukharin explains it thus—
The tendency which can frequently be observed in our own Marxian ranks—namely, a purely nihilistic attitude to the problem of form as such— is entirely wrong. In such an event literary research resolves itself into nothing but a superficial social-class characterization of the so-called ideological content of the poetic work, which, in Its bare, rudimentary and over-simplified form, is carried over into the characterization of the poet as a poet. As we have seen, however, form and content constitute a unity, but a unity of contradictions. Moreover, such an attitude leads people to understand by 'content' what is, properly speaking, the ideological source of the content, and not its artistic transformation.
The best representative of these writers have, however, not fallen into this trap. The subject-matter, imagery, and style of the writer of social realism do not lose all individuality, are not reduced to uniformity. We have only to read U.S.A., The Grapes of Wrath, The Magnetic Mountain, On the Frontier, to see this. And the tremendous development of the short story by socialist writers finally removes the accusation.
With Radek, we do not doubt that the time is coming when a great revolutionary literature will be created, and these are undoubtedly its beginnings.
Thunderous ovation. All rise. Shouts from all parts of the hall: "Long live Comrade Stalin!" All stand and sing the "Internationale," after which the ovation is resumed. Shouts of "Long live our leader, Comrade Stalin, hurrah!"'
It must be admitted that passages like this, occurring in reports of meetings of high Soviet Governmental bodies, are a little dampening to the enthusiasm of would-be supporters of Soviet Russia. And when we see the photographs of demonstrations in Russia, with their numerous enormous banners depicting the singularly unattractive Bust of Lenin and Stalin; when we read even scientific reports studded with somewhat Fulsome praises of Stalin; when we study some of the remarkable speeches in favour of The Soviet leaders at public functions—every person with any taste at all must be a Little discomfited.
This question of Stalin-worship isn't funny, as it might seem at first sight. If it is really the result of 'the deliberate exploitation by the governing junta of the emotion of hero-worship' (S. & B. Webb), if it is an expression of cringing servility such as characterised the worship of the 'Little Father,' if Stalin and Lenin have in fact been deified to take the place of God which Marxist theory is busy demolishing— then we are justified in doubting whether the Soviet system is really such a fine thing as the daily papers, with suspicious suddenness, are making out. For servility implies a hierarchy and exploitation, and an inculcated hero-worship implies a lack of other emotional outlets.
Walking up the main street of the smallish town in which I live, I counted the number of pictures of Mr Winston Churchill in shop windows. There were twenty-one. In bookshops, Mr Churchill's likeness stared at me from almost every periodical and a number of books. I asked an assistant in one book shop how many pictures of Mr Churchill she sold daily. 'At least half a dozen,' she said. While I was talking, a lady came in and bought a pencil drawing of General Freyberg.
And one remembers, of course, the Coronation . . . .
And outside the shop, I met a friend who, singularly unfortunate in his Bolshevik acquaintances, believed that the Soviet creed was that there was no God, but if there were, Lenin and Stalin, like Caligula, had undergone apotheosis in his lifetime. I mentioned the result of my modest researches.
'Entirely different,' snorted my friend, remaining curiously sane, 'Britain's got a Job to do, and Churchill's at the head of the Government that's doing it. He's a
My friend did not admire Mr Chamberlain, but I omit his irrelevant (and irreverent) remarks.
'Just because people buy Churchill's picture, it doesn't mean that he's being worshipped personally. Can't you see"—"he's just a symbol"—"a sort of personification of the British spirit of endurance and perseverance?'
My friend was right, and I admitted it. 'Now.' I said,' substitute "Russia" for "England," and "Stalin" for "Churchill," and your remarks sum up the Soviet situation exactly.
In the light of my friend's words, the immoderate and often vulgar idolisation of Stalin begins to become intelligible. From a position of indescribable degradation, the Soviet people have arisen, through intense suffering and hardship, to a decent standard of living, and have brought about a flowering of culture, art, and science as has never before been achieved in such a short period. There is nothing artificial in their gratitude for this new life; it has grown up spontaneously with the growth of the Soviet state. Side by side with pictures and busts of Stalin, can be seen representations of Marx and Engels, who laid down the socialist theory which guides the new State, and Lenin, whose genius was largely instrumental in bringing the new society into being. There is not the slightest evidence that the homage of the Russian people is directed towards the actual persons of these individuals, or that they ascribe divine qualities to them. No, they are symbols of socialism, and very great men; in the same way, Mr Churchill is a symbol of the British spirit, and a great man. In the words of Lion Feuchtwanger:
'When the people say "Stalin," they have in the back of their minds increasing prosperity and increasing culture. When the people say "we love Stalin," it is because this is the simplest and most natural form of expression they can give to their willing acceptance of their economic circumstances, of Socialism, and of the regime.'
And there is good reason for their identification of Stalin with the socialist regime. Stalin's achievements are not negligible. The Soviet State, as Hitler is now finding to his cost, isn't a thing to be sniffed at.
All this may be conceded. But why, it may be asked, does the identification of Stalin with the successes of socialism take such a lavish and ill-expresses form? Praise Stalin if you wish"—" we admit he may be worthy of it"—"but for Heaven's sake do it with moderation! Your excesses merely nauseate us cold-blooded English!
Pat Sloan, in his book 'Soviet Democracy,' confesses that he 'was often unfavourably impressed by the lavish way in which love and praise of Stalin was expressed! But one day, he happened to see a letter from a young Russian worker to his brother, which began 'Honoured beloved brother.' Sloan suggested to the worker that he should simply write 'Dear brother,' and the worker was literally shocked. Doubts gave way to a clearer understanding.
Inaccurate translations, deliberate misinterpretations, and the failure of translators to grasp the Russian idiom are at the bottom of many of the popular misconcep
Consider the quite irrational wording of everyday commercial correspondence in English-speaking countries. We write 'Dear So-and-so' to our deadliest enemy, and receive 'esteemed favours' from business rivals, without a qualm. These forms of expression are woven into our language. They do not imply servility or absence of equality; a lawyer's 'learned friend' and a politician, respectively an ignoramus and a rogue, yet such expressions are not considered unethical. In a similar way, but with full sincerity, the words 'great and beloved' are naturally linked with 'Stalin' in the Soviet Union. And, it may be added, with a great deal more reason than swayed the English House of Commons during their curious fit of hysterics at the time of Munich.
And how does the 'great and beloved Stalin' himself react to this zealous attention on the part of the Soviet people?
It is well-known that Stalin is perhaps the most unassuming and unpretentious of all the great leaders in the world today. He needs no military uniform, swaggering bearing, or autocratic manner—nor, it may be uncharitably added, any umbrella or cigar. His domestic relations are shrouded in obscurity; he will not allow his birthday to be celebrated publicly; he constantly emphasises in public that the people's praises must be construed as applying to his policy and not to his person.
Apparently the only occasion on which Stalin discussed 'Stalin-worship' with a Foreigner in an interview was when Lion Feuchtwanger visited Moscow in
Listen to portion of Feuchtwanger's report of the interview, taken from his fine And impartial book, Moscow,
'He shrugs his shoulders at the vulgarity of the immoderate worship of his person. He excuses his peasants and workers on the grounds that they have too much to do to be able to acquire good taste as well, and laughs a little at the hundreds of thousands of enormously enlarged portraits of a man with a moustache which dance before his eyes at demonstrations. I pointed out to him that in the end even men of unimpeachable taste have set up busts and portraits of him, of more than doubtful artistic merit, in places to which they do not belong, as, for example, the Rembrandt Exhibition. Here he became serious. He supposed that there lay behind such extravagances the zeal of men who had only lately espoused the regime and were now doing everything within their power to prove their loyalty. He thinks it is possible even that the "wreckers" may be behind it in an endeavour to discredit him. "A servile fool," he said irritable, "does more harm than a hundred enemies." If he tolerates all the cheering, he explained, it is because he knows the naïve joy the uproar of the festivities affords those who organise them, and is conscious that it is not intended for him personally, but for the representative of the principle that the establishment of Socialist economy in the Soviet Union is more important than the permanent revolution.'
Not with standing this, the Russian Communist Party is well aware of the dangers
Feuchtwanger relates a little story in this connection, which in my mind sums up the whole situation admirably. The story goes that Stalin gave a little dinner on New Year's Day to a circle of intimate friends. He raised his glass, and said: 'I drink to The health of the incomparable leader of the peoples, of the great genius, Comrade Stalin. There, friends; and that is the last time I shall be toasted here this year.'
War conditions . . . . . have occasioned the departure of our Brightest and Best'—Salient,.1941 , No. 1
There are certain functions which one expects Salient as 'an organ of student opinion' to fulfil. These include comments on current events within and without the College, exchange of opinion on controversial subjects, the encouragement of literary endeavour, pronouncements of policy on matters which affect student organisations, and, as a synthesis from all these, a reflection on the contemporary student attitude. This review is written with these functions in mind.
To judge how effectively events within the College have been covered is difficult for one who has not lived through them, but certainly the recurrent ones—Tournament, Capping, Stud. Ass. Elections, sports and so on— seem to have been done competently and thoroughly. On the other hand there is scarcely any sign of critical comment on external happenings in a year that has been so full of activity. These times breed oppression and censorship, is is true; but this country has never felt their heel to such a degree that vital matters cannot be treated fairly adequately in a paper that is independent of the profit motive. The exercise— with reason and with tact— of those liberties which we retain here is important to ensure their preservation, and falls within the sphere of Salient. So much was admitted in the first editorial, but the promise was not fulfilled. For example, there were important municipal elections in Wellington this year. Was salient not sufficiently aware of them to attempt at least to enunciate the general principles involved? Carefully done, here was a chance to tackle the town-gown bogey honestly. Victoria College has heard much, good and
bad, about the U.S.S.R. during the past decade, yet when recently the destiny of that country became dramatically linked with ours, the only references in Salient were a muddled religious rationalisation and a pacifist introspection.
Here it is appropriate to regret that each number did not carry regular editorials. The two issues just referred to alone gave material for treatment such as proved successful a few years ago. Two further matters of more immediate importance to the Student which should have received editorial attention were the reported opinion of a person closely connected with the College that academic freedom is a mere catch-word, and the more recent whipping up of feeling against freedom of conscience in school teachers. I do not agree with a former Salient reviewer that student opinion is necessarily 'half-baked,' and time and thought devoted by the staff to regular editorials would help to refute this charge. It is to be hoped that the items suggested here were not subject to any authoritarian ban, and that only hypersensitivity caused them to be neglected: that is deplorable enough. In any case the policy stated in No. 1, '. . . . . . . . adoption of a more cosmopolitan attitude. Complete freedom within the laws of libel, sedition and obscenity' has been somewhat forgotten. Incidentally one article, in No. 6, did deal fairly adequately with a situation comparable with those cited above—but this was borrowed from Salient's contemporary, Canta!
A commendable enterprise on Salient's part was the series of special articles criticising the curricula. Judging on general grounds it is apparent that even if the discussions presented to not hasten the reform of teaching methods, at least they can help the student to realise that there are other and perhaps better approaches to his subject than those he accepts in his lectures. It is of interest to recall that eight years ago an article criticising the teaching of law was withdrawn from publication in Spike!
The exchange of opinion by correspondence and criticism of articles is quite marked in this year's Salient and reveals a case of earnest, if not always very clear, thinking which deserves exploitation. The criticism levelled by 'Tallyho' against Salient itself has flashes of truth which would be more easily recognised if 'Tallyho' were not so obviously enjoying his blood-sport. On an editorial staff his breezy ability might usefully be tempered by a better appreciation of the fox's position. The controversy which started from the interview with class-conscientious Mr Menzies wandered far enough from its initial point to reveal that the same conflicts trouble each generation of students, but it addes no new material and the editor was justified in slashing it.
The more literary sections of Salient have never reached a high standard. The inability to avoid flatness on the one hand and incoherence on the other is a bad fault in most student writers. The serial Victoria wasn't worth the ingenuity expended on it, and appeared to be slipping back to the old vice that crippled Smad, namely, College gossip such as only a few initiated can appreciate. On the whole, however, there is less really bad writing than one often finds in student papers. The few examples of serious verse except for a piece over professional initials, are bad. On the lighter side Our Moderns hits a fair last line, and but for a little metrical awkwardness and a falling away in the last stanza, Janus is good work in the 'Sagittarius' style. The writer of this review has long held that parody and satirical verse of this type are to
Some of the reviews of the films, Dramatic Club shows, Modern Book discussions, and the College and Culture article are more readable and informative than some of the commentating which ran riot in previous volumes of Salient.
The paper seems now to have reached a stable and convenient format. But Surely four misprints in nine lines in No. 2 could have been avoided in a fortnightly Magazine.
These are the particulars which deserve mention in considering Salient Salient shows that just the same essential subjects which most concerned students then are in modified versions the intellectual grist of today, although politics are apparently treated with more caution.
Judged as a whole then, Salient Salient staff have done that and incidentally recorded something of the present student attitude and problems although erring perhaps a little on the side of continuity at the expense of contemporaneity. It is to be hoped that Salient will now go further and give a lead in the resolution of those problems.
Finally, in explanation of the title of this review, let it be pointed out that 'bulge' was the term used to describe the pressure on the French lines which the Germans later developed into a new and most effective salient.
Calm and strong came the chill dawn. The east lightened with a paleness that spread over the dusky sky, the cold stars faded. The mountain ridges stood stark and clear barring the eastern brightness, and over the fields lay the still blankets of mist. Nothing stirred in the dawn-silence, the quiet of the cold dawn.
Close by the road a great haystack stood foursquare against wind and weather, and under the shelter of its steep side lay a man. Calmly he lay under the lee of the great stack that stood where a hundred others had stood, since the cycle of seed and harvest has come to the plain. Under the stack that is the symbol of the richness of the soil, the storing of the wealth of summer against the lean months, the land's security against the dark winter.
The man had rolled his coat for a pillow under his head, and he lay close against the warm hay. In the cold dawn he had woken and watched the fading stars. Now he sat up, leaning against the stack, stretching with a great yawn. He unrolled his coat, brushing off the wisps of hay. Lazily he put it on, and stood up to stamp his feet, crushing the stuble.
An ordinary looking man, such as people passed on dusty roads every day in the time of the depression. Whirling over the white roads in the shimmering heat, people saw the drab figure far ahead, slouching along, a little cloud of dust rising and falling round the moving feet. The car would draw near, the dusty figure would edge closer to the roadside, walking slowly on the rough metal. Then the car would whirl past, engine roaring, loose stone beating a tattoo under the fenders. And behind it the dust boiled and eddied in a choking cloud, so that the man walking on the rough stones of the roadside screwed his eyes tight shut, feeling the dust hot and rank in his nostrils. Perhaps they would look at him from the car, to wave, as they did to all countryfolk. But the man plodded on with eyes shut in the burning cloud, dust settling on stained shapeless hat, dust spurting up around the broken shoes. 'Swagger' said the car-driver as they rolled on over the hot, white road.
The man under the haystack was one of these that travelled the roads homeless and without hope. Casual workers, factory hands, drovers, tradesmen, they tramped through the burning summer heat, through the chill, dark winter, from farmhouse to farmhouse, the victims of a cycle of boom and slump they could not understand. On over the roads, having no roots in the rich earth, no foundations in the hard cities. On endlessly over the roads, like the thistledown of high summer, like the scattered leaves in autumn.
So this man, stamping his feet in the stubble-field. Tall, yet stooping, the stance of one used to contemplating the road just ahead of weary feet. The skin of the face brown and lined, stretched tight over nose and cheekbones. Bearded, because it
The man felt in his pocket, grimed fingers reaching for a parcel of sandwiches, begged at the last farmhouse. Two left, yesterday's bread, crusty, hard. Chewing slowly, he stamped his feet. Slowly, luxuriously he tasted each mouthful, savouring the coarse bread, the rank cheese. Then he looked round, made sure he had left nothing, and climbed the wire fence into the ditch by the road. Here lay a bicycle, ancient and without mudguards, the tyre casings swollen by sleeves inserted to protect the tubes. He lugged the wreck onto the road. Then he did a strange thing. He looked around, determined the wind's direction, and set off on his creaking machine so that the wind was behind. Each morning he did this. So little object had he in his wanderings that the changing wind was his guide.
Behind was the night through which he had slept, before him the day through which he would ride, pushing his bicycle up hills, coasting down their far sides, grinding steadily along on the flat stretches. The day, punctuated, if one were lucky, by three meals.
Blue smoke rose behind pine trees round a bend in the road, and the man pushed on, thinking of the pannikins of hot steaming tea, red and fragrant, splashing scalding out of smoke blackened billies. One poured milk into the strong red tea, clouding it so that it became a rich brown ....
Now he came round the corner past the pine belt, and saw down to the left in a hollow the broad-roofed sheds of a sawmill. The beautiful scent of woodsmoke hung in the fresh morning air. Men were moving about, preparing the first meal of the day. The swagger turned his bicycle onto the sideroad that led to the mill, and clattered furiously down the slope. The green manuka bushes growing at the roadside slapped wet against his legs as he bumped along. Faster and faster down the road, clinging tightly to the handlebars ....
On the flat ground round the last bend stood the big red truck, ready loaded with timber, its engine warming up for the day's work. The man on the bicycle had no time for anything but the reaction of surprise, and by his own impetus he was dashed against the radiator grill and instantly killed. 'You never seen such a mess,' said the truck-driver. 'You never seen such a bloody mess in all your life.'
A moment in time, an incident, pointless, rather grisly, not to be dwelt upon. Ludicrous to the mill-hands, who after their first surprise joked about the disadvantages of dying on an empty stomach. You glanced at the three lines at the bottom of the last column on page five, voluptuously made a mental picture of the incident, turned the page. It meant little, except one less shiftless mouth to feed. The next day more swaggers would be along, tramping the same way.
That was it. More swaggers. Not all were conveniently removed as he. The army of the hopeless marched on. And as they marched, they gained ideas, which hunger and want and the stricken faces of their wives and children urged them to embrace. Ideas they worked out as they tramped along, which they discussed in generalizations over communal fires. Ideas which became their hope, their background,
They are still with us, these men. Tom is dead, but Dick and Harry and others are here. They cannot be duped again, they have suffered too much. And they will not soon forget the faces of their children, for whom they will die, these men who travelled aimlessly with the wind. With the wind, of which it has been said that no man can tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
Or whither it goeth .... Remember this.
* * *
* * *
In The Writer's Day, doses stiff or moderate of careerism conciliated us in our twenties. We were out to make good, and like our elders we believed in that 'Shrieking, bawdy thing called Success' (Sinclair Lewis). We were restive, we suffered from the emotional teething troubles of adolescence, but the sense of frustration, though it irked, did not rankle. The twenty pluses of today suffer much more acutely. A sour soil clogs their sap, and they feel compelled to uproot themselves. Never perhaps has there been such literature of protest as is being written by and for youth today.
This is a hopeful symptom. Whether smoothly phrased as a Change of Heart or a New Order, or bluntly advocated as a 'General Overturn,' a profound moral change is felt to be necessary. If youth were not undergoing the throes of this change, it would be dead indeed—a corpse bound to a corpse.
In every one of these scraps of prose it is easy to find passages symptomatic of a militant antagonism to the sorry scheme of things. Nor is the Negation of Negations lacking. In some cases there is a fear that even Realism may be only a plausible escape from Escapism.
The thinking done round this theme strikes one reader (not a judge—judges and competitions are preposterous) as good. Those people, matured and maybe stereotyped in time-honoured folk ways, should confront and try to refute it. They have concrete proof that the world fashioned by competitive materialism is tumbling about their ears. Of this fact Youth's thinking will provide a theoretical confirmation. And fact is only potent and salutary to the extent that it is used as raw material from which to formulate key theories.
If it be rejoined that only a handful of Victoria College students go in for a Spike Prose Competition, the sur-rejoinder is that these are the articulate minority and, therefore, the people to be noticed. Their apocalyptic view is, moreover, confirmed by our contemporary poets, those starvelings of an age obsessed with price indices and restricted food quotas. Thank Heaven, is the feeling of one ex-teacher, that I am no longer responsible for the handouts palmed off in the name of learning to these misfed and querulous minds! What a diet of shrivelled palimpsests for greedy and growing intellects!
Assessed for their thought value, one therefore rates these scrappy essays high. Their quality as prose is a different matter. A prose style, if Mencken is right, is the last product of cultural maturity. It rarely emerges from the chrysalis before the late thirties. It grows in a soil not merely hurriedly spaded over, but laboriously trenched. And it is a style. That is, it is as characteristic of the writer as his handwriting. It is a mental gait comparable in its uniqueness to his bodily gait. It may be bad, but, bad or good, it is of a piece with its begetter.
In the opinion of the writer (who, of course, is only one person) none of these pieces of prose has Style. Many of them reflect influences, and many of them are clear and cogent. The best of them go straight at the job of getting across what the writer has to say.
The three selected as most worthwhile in content—as showing the greatest ability to think on paper—are: —
These three are bracketed equal.
A suggestion, if there is space for it. Why should not such writings, signed or unsigned, be placed in a receptacle where in Ms. form they would be available to all who cared to read them? If some readers chose to comment or rejoin, so much the better. Such a procedure would be, as it were, a leafage sprouting on the one branch of Anglo-Saxon still living.
There was little of really outstanding quality among it.
This was a very difficult collection of verse to judge. But it was interesting for more than one reason. It was nearly all devoted to recording individual emotional reactions to war and death and social disaster, with an occasional attempt to formulate some of the stock communist observations on such matters. There were hardly any lyric outbursts directed at Beauty, or moonlit waters, or any of those vague poetic things. There was hardly any regular verse-form employed, and very little straight rhyme. The writers, it seems, were prepared to play around with large conceptions, eternity and the intelligentsia and so on; and technically to try the most difficult feats of assonance and verse-structure; they were prepared, one or two of them, to rhyme the first and third lines in a four line verse, but God forbid anything so coarse as to rhyme the second and fourth! (One must except here Mr Meek, who has gone all T. S. Eliot.) This to me argues, paradoxically enough, a certain lack of adventurousness, of courage to knuckle down to the very difficult discipline that is a part of training in verse. I am not, of course, arguing that poets should bolt back to the funk-holes of tradition. But discipline: take H.W.'s Sauve Qui Peut, a piece I re-read and considered a good deal. It is of course derivative, but it has some real distinction of phrase. Twice it works up to emotional climax—and then thud, one is let down by the rhythmical carelessness of the eighth and the fifteenth lines. Or is the irregularity deliberate?—but then the writer's ear, his rhythmical sense, must be all out. There's a failure somewhere. It comes in with other writers in the acceptance, without suspicious enough examination, of a currency of thought hardly native, e.g.,
Or do I misjudge this writer? Anyhow he talks later of casting the golden grain— which is a plunge in the opposite direction. Also he comes into my finalists.
Now for judgment. I exclude people who can be hardly classed as students, but request attention in passing to Vogt's Essay in Criticism for its mastery of ironical statement and technical cleverness. After much hesitation and looking back I put first H.W.'s Intelligentsia—not very lyrical and with some confusion of imagery, but short, succinct and skilful in its mixture of rhyme and assonance. It should probably have a footnote to elucidate its whole significance for those unacquainted with left-wing social theory and the part which professors and lecturers play therein. I give honourable mention to untitled verses by K.J.H. beginning 'Hearing of the mocking surge of war,' already referred to. And there is something impressive about War Song (no signature), except for one very poor line and two where the straining for effect is dreadful. Entrails are hard to manage, even in this macabre context.
The Quality of the entries for the Spike photographic competition this year seems to have in no way suffered through the shortage of material and limitation of subject matter imposed by war conditions. Although the number of entrants was not great, each of them submitted several prints, all of which were of a uniformly high standard.
The prize of one guinea I have awarded to Mr M. A. Johnson for his entry Quo Vadis? Of this entrant's technical skill, I shall say more later, but here I must say a word about the other qualities of the picture. In it are exemplified most of the qualities which impress in the best of modern photography. The conception is a good one, and the choice of material indicates that it has been the result of careful study, and not of haphazard snapshotting. The composition is bold, but there is no sense of a conscious striving for the freakish or unusual for its own sake. Rather is this print the result of the work of an artist of great originality who does not scorn to build firmly on the traditions of the past.
For the remainder of the competition, rather than attempt to distinguish between so much work of equal merit, I have chosen for reproduction a number of prints typical of the work submitted. First among these are two prints by M. Geddes. The Rock Climber is a well arranged composition, depending mainly on its pattern for effect, and backed by sound technique. Mount Aspiring is at first glance merely a good record photograph, but a closer analysis shows the most careful composition
In an entirely different class, yet equally satisfying is G. Coles In the beech forest. This picture has much in common with Impressionism, depending for its effectiveness entirely on the skilful rendering of an effect of sunlight. This type of photography is not often successful, which makes such a fine example as this of double value.
I could not resist including two further examples of the versatility of the first prize winner. His Profile makes good use of the seldom used process of solarisation, and possesses a vigour of characterisation which is quite lacking from the majority of commercial portraits.
Honesty is very different from either of the foregoing examples of Mr Johnson's work. Here, as in the prizewinning print, we find a technique which insists on the finest detail, yet retains its command of the broad masses and lines of the picture. Such a picture is at once reminiscent of the etchings of Albrecht Durer, and the photographs of Edward Weston.
The entrants in this competition are to be congratulated on the production of photographic work which is as fine as any being produced in this country. Much of the work submitted was fully up to International Salon standard.
All his life he sat under the mountain, waiting for it to come down. The others weren't like that. He thought them ignorant: they knew him to be mad. They tilled their fields: the men carved queer, strong carvings out of the red, soft rock. The women made baskets, and wove cloths subtly from the fibres of leaves. But always he sat there, waiting for the mountain to come down.
In the evenings the men and women gathered: they danced and sang together, and their laughter, tinkling over the taut strings of their ukeleles, echoed up the mountain and mocked it. Then he knew, that there was no hope for them.
One day a small wisp of smoke appeared on the lip of the mountain. That is the sign, he told them. But they laughed, and held hands, to comfort one another. Never mind, you shall see, he said.
On the second day the smoke had thickened almost imperceptably. By so much are our lives shortened, he said. But they were anxious to return to their carving and weaving, and had no time for the mountain. And that night too they laughed and sang, while he sat there, waiting for it to come down.
One day, oppressed by the feeling of doom that hung over him and maddened by their stupidity, he said: 'Why is it that you doubt and refuse to see the truth? Do you not know that the mountain will one day come over us? Must I prove it to you? Very well; I shall climb up to the top, where no man has ever been. And when I come back I shall tell you what I have seen, so that you may know that you are damned.'And off he went up the mountain.
Down below the people watched him set out, but since their memories were not very good they soon forget all about him. On the second day they were again at their carving and weaving, or in the fields. And at night the faint echo of their laughter and the taut strings of the ukeleles mocked the man climbing the mountain. Fools, he thought, they'll know soon enough.
By the fourth day he reached the lip of the crater. A watcher from below who happened to glance up thought he saw a smudge, like a small black beetle, on the edge of the horizon. Then there was a puff of smoke, like a railway engine, only it wasn't smoke and he had never seen a railway engine.
In the succeeding generations the tribe became more and more numerous, until it could no longer live on the side of the mountain. So that, when at last the mountain did come down as the man had prophesied, there was nobody sitting there, waiting for it. But now they are living on a broad plain by the side of a great stream. And the story has it that a member of the tribe, far wiser than the rest, sits by its banks
'The Game for the Game's Sake.' On the face of it this consecrated phrase is just as silly as speaking of War for War's sake, Art for Art's sake, or—what is in precisely the same category—Beer for Beer's sake. Combat, culture, and liquor, all have their place. But they are ends not means. In themselves they are nothing. The formulation is meaningless. But is the role of sport in Capitalist society entirely meaningless? Can we consider it independent of space, time, and the historical development of man any more than any other aspect of social life? Of course not. Sport has just as much a social basis, a social function, as art, religion, philosophy, or any other aspect of the superstructure. If we are to speak of these as having an economic nexus, as being not entirely unconditioned by the state of productive forces and productive relations, we cannot deny a similar development to the pleasures of the people. What, in short, is the role of Sport in the class struggle?
The ruling ideology, we have been told, is the ideology of the ruling class. There is an ideology of sport. This is not to be denied. Whose interest, then, does it serve? The question is a fair one. Class ideologies must be admitted unless, of course, one does not 'believe' in the class struggle or rather, does not wish to believe in the class struggle, because it is an objective fact and was not invented by Marx when his carbuncles were troubling him a little more than usual. The ideology of the working class is a weapon of the working class. The ideology of the bourgeoisie is its armour.
Now if the idealogical role of religion can legitimately be considered as that of
Ask yourself for one moment what is the common justification for playing organised games? 'Why, to keep fit of course,' you'll reply at once. But fit for what? It can only be for the place where you spend one half of your waking life, that is, the factory. Therefore the harder you play the harder you'll work. But of course if the Capitalist state put it as nakedly to the workers as this the effect would soon be lost. No man would ever play to become a better work slave. Subtler, loftier, more 'ideal' reasons are required. Is that of sheer fun enough? If it were, surely it would be used extensively. But it's not. Indeed this strikes you at once, when looking through the orations of headmasters or the books of devotees, that the playing of games is never re-commended on the grounds that the players might like them and thoroughly enjoy themselves. That would be too grossly material indeed. In fact, people who are happy in their own little ways are never considered very satisfactory people in our Secondary Schools. To allow them to play the games they like would be unthinkable. Games are disciplines. They serve to build 'character,' the more spiritualised man, and that, of course, is, as we are continually reassured really what our schools are there for.
Now it would never do for the bourgeoisie to admit that competitive sports in bourgeois countries are exploited by capitalists, priests, and militarists, so that men and women may become more efficient workers, more religiously devout churchgoers, and more brutal soldiers. It would never do if it were perfectly plain to everybody that Capitalism benefits from athletics (as Russian Social scientists have put it) by 'developing within the competitors a feeling of "rugged individualism," a belief in the righteousness of the strong oppressing the weak, and the delusion that in every field there is the opportunity to win wealth and glory.'After all, as Lenin has said, the slave who has become concious of his slavery has already half ceased to be a slave. So, just as an ideology had to be created overnight for Fascism so an ideology has had to be created for Sport. A very pretty little structure it is too. Here's a fine sample.
A former president of the English Rugby Union is speaking.
We do not want so much personal prowess, kudos, or other bitternesses to come out of this game, but rather that it will quietly and invisibly but yet surely endow those who play it—of whatever station in life—with an instinctive appreciation of loyalties, principles, and ways of living of which the country was never more in need than now.
This was said in
We don't want the game to lose one inch of ground in our industrial centres. In our schools and colleges, it has spread like wildfire. Let administrators, old players, referees, and influential and wealthy people, do all they can to see that the game flourishes too among the others who would enjoy it equally well.
Well, the 'influential and wealthy people 'hardly need to be taught to suck eggs. They are all Bodgers. All the whiskey Czars give money to the Salvation Army. For the encouragement of temperance of course. That goes without saying, just as it's obvious that the whole machinery of the capitalist state is merely designed to see that men are treated as ends and never means only.
You have the whole fascinating story in the history of the thing. 'Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.'We hear it before we learn to lisp. But the legend is not a contemporary one. In fact, when they asked him, the old warrior looking back those seventy odd years could distinctly recall hop scotch and puss in the corner only. Organised games first began to become a part of English life in the forties and fifties of last century. The dates are not accidental. England was then the first industrial nation of the world. The bourgeoisie had thoroughly subdued and amalgamated themselves with the old feudal aristocracy. The exploitation of India and the opening up of new colonial markets was beginning on the grand scale. The Chartist movement had just collapsed and the systematic corruption of sections of the English working class with the super profits of Empire had begun. It was impossible to abolish the class struggle without as Marx said 'abolishing Capitalism the condition of their own parasitical existence. 'To effectively grind the last drop of blood out of the 'brightest diadem of the Imperial Crown' it was necessary that the English imperialists should leave a safe rear before them. England must not any longer be allowed to consider itself 'two nations' nor must the English working men pride themselves any longer that Marx had called them 'the prize fighters of Europe.' In short the workers must be compelled to forget that 'the victory of the working class will be conquered by the working class alone. 'And how better could this be done than to have them believe that their interests and the interests of their boss were one.
Various techniques were used to further the process of class collaboration. There was the technique of diverting the working class from the heady ideology of the class war up the garden path of reformism and 'the inevitability of gradualness.' There was too of course the good old standby—spiritual gin. But this was become a little shopworn. There remained Sport. It has become the best of all. Transform the real war into a mimic one! Replace the battles of the streets with the battles of the fields! For the clenched fist shadow boxing! Class collaboration! After all it's only a game!
Let's get back to the root of the sportsman's ideology—" Fair Play, " those blessed words. I quote a German-writing in
Today the English morality is influenced less by the cleric's sermon than by the decision of the referee. Every English youngster understands that certain things which from instinctive or practical motives he would like to do, simply must not and cannot be done Thus fair play becomes the keynote of English Morality and the playing field an incomparable moral training ground. There is no walk of English life in which this appeal is not understood nor in the long
run unheeded—even in politics .... A patriotic slogan will give rise to misunderstanding and controversy out of proportion to its utility, but the simple terminology of the playing fields has been engraved upon the Englishman's table of commandments with a chisel of steel .... Fair play governs the relations with one's neighbours, especially in those things which put a man on his mettle, competition, war rivalry and love. Fair play means regard for one's neighbour and seeing the man and fellow-player in one's opponent. Even the youngest English child learns that it is wrong to take advantage of the weak, and unmanly to illtreat a beaten adversary.
Here you have it in all its lovely simplicity. The author I said was a German. In these few words is explained the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Understanding their purport you can at last understand why the bloody hand of Fascist barbarism holds all Europe in its grasp. The reason is this. The German Social Democrats played fair. They played the game according to the rules but the rules were made by the enemy.
And what are the rules? The first of them is this. It is the mark of the 'sport' everywhere we are told.
'Never hit a man when he is down.'
We must not sing then the rebel song of the ages, must not with Milton rejoice at The Deliverer
or with James Connolly welcome the fact that
No a good healthy proletarian hate is anathema, even a little anti-Fascist zeal is taboo. The Spanish Republicans were, then, jolly good sports and entirely above reproach when they exiled Franco and the rebel generals to pleasant retirement in the Canaries instead of shooting them out of hand for the dogs they were. One day the Spanish people will demand an explanation for that and they will not be wearing cricket gloves when they ask. And of course, to go further, it was simply only playing the game for Blum to comfortably house the Cagoulards until the day of their deliverance came and they went out into the streets to take over for Hitler the government of the country they had been so active in betraying. There is no fifth column in the Soviet Union. But as we know these Russians are utter cads. When after Whiteguard Generals caught in arms against the Republic had repeatedly broken their parole and joined the Counter Revolutionary armies parole was no longer given. Instead the Revaluation began to behave in the plebeian manner. The Red Army won the Civil War. The Revolution has continued to behave in the plebeian manner. The Red Army is winning another war.
The second maxim of the sportsman is this.
'Two to one is not fair play.'
This is to say that while it is entirely proper for a policeman to batten an unarmed demonstrator's head in and boot him to death it's not at all a fair go for his mates to give him a hand. The working class must never become conscious that as Shelley put it
We are many, they are few.
The bourgeoisie are just as aware as Lenin was that organisation is the sole weapon of the proletariat in its struggle for victory.
Thirdly that which chiefly distinguishes the 'sport' above all others is his realisation of this:
After all it's only a game, or it's the spirit of the game that matters.
This is the language of social democracy, of social pacifism everywhere, the language of those whom Daniel de Leon so splendidly characterised as the 'labour lieutenants of capitalism. 'It's really a quite insignificant triviality as to what is the goal of the Labour movement. The issue before the working class is not whether in the words of Goethe they are to be 'either a hammer or anvil' Ends are unpleasant things. People are apt to misunderstand them. It's best to decently obscure them. Then nobody can accuse you of aiming at them. Though of course you trot them out for the workers every now and then to give them an airing and to reassure the people that though you aren't yet in a position to bite the tiger you are still very assiduously licking him. Bernstein, the apostle of German Social Democracy, was right they say. 'The movement is everything, the goal nothing. 'This is how they speak. 'The workers, poor fellows, are thoroughly mistaken. The boss is not such a bad fellow after all. He can't very well, of course, encourage your getting together. When workers get together they might want to do something. Why not collaborate on the field of sport. Life's a game. Your children are not hungry, worker. Your wife's not dying. You are not unemployed. Your daughters are not really on the streets. People overeat too much anyhow. You're run down. You need a little exercise to build yourself up. Come out to the nets for a work out. Forget all your worries and don't listen any longer to these dangerous reds.'
Capitalism by means of sport carries into the lives of human beings that fractionalisation which distinguishes its industrial processes. A man is no longer a good man who plays a game now and then. No, he is a good footballer, a good runner, a good rower, and this tends to be the sole end of his being. Men are no longer encouraged to seek the Socratian ideal to see life steady and to see it whole. Hegel's magnificent injunction to 'be a person' is ignored. This is understandable because if the slaves of capital were to proceed in understanding beyond their little parts they might begin to understand why a society which prides itself on its individualism has no room for individuals.
To sum up, the role of the sporting ideology in capitalist society is this. It serves to encourage the workers to climb out of their class rather than to rise with it. Cooperation on the job, fatal to the boss, is transformed into the sham co-operation of the playing field. In short, knowing very well that the class struggle lies in the objective dialectic of history and is not to be denied the bourgeoisie have perverted the playway of mankind into a weapon of class war and have made it an anodyne more powerful than battlefleets.
All this has nothing whatsoever to do with the playing of games as they are played at Victoria, for the sheer fun we get out of them, though I suspect there is a very real correlation between Victoria's healthy attitude to sport and its reputation for being somewhat more 'politically conscious' than most University Colleges. Nor are these attitudes entirely unconnected either with the fact that one Secondary School in the Victoria College district which does not enforce compulsory games has been said to have produced more radicals than all the others put together.
The proper attitude to games as parts, important, necessary parts but parts only of the whole personality and activity of men and women can only be found in a society which cherishes individuals, a society which has been built 'not to restrict personal liberty, but in order that the human individual may feel really free.' That is to say a society 'in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. 'We know now that such a society is no longer a dream.
The choice to which the modern man will finally be reduced, it has been said, is that of being a Bolshevist, or a Jesuit. In that case (assuming that by Jesuit is meant the ultramundane Catholic) there does not seem to be much room for hesitation. Ultramundane Catholicism does not, like Bolshevism, strike at the root of civilization. In fact, under certain conditions that are already partly in sight, the Catholic Church may perhaps be the only institution left in the Occident that can be counted on to uphold civilized standards.
One would almost think to read this, that Irving Babbitt had been hung aloft in the skies as a symbol of the new era to be designed for France, the new era of Vichy. Marshal Petain has said: 'Everyone must now make his choice.' And to the inquiring faces of a betrayed people the mocking words of La Revue des Deux Mondes, of Gringoire, Candide, Vendemiaire, Figaro, and La Republique du Sud-Esthave given a blunt answer: 'You must choose the camp of militant Catholicism.' How many people remembered Abyssinia, how many Spain? And how many Frenchmen, perhaps the most politically-educated among workers under an imperialist system, how many were deceived by the old, old cry—'Heaven has sent all these misfortunes to save the soul of France!'
However this may be, France's 'new culture' is being imposed by the Catholic Church, under government protection and patronage. Under the cry that 'spiritual forces must again direct the life of the nation,' the Ecole Normale has been closed, and the schools are under the control of the Jesuit congregations. There is a rabid censorship on all postal communication, on newspapers, and on literature. The government has decided to revise all school books in order to eliminate 'subversive' ideas, to destroy many, and write others to replace them.
But most important and characteristic of all is the revival of mediaeval feudalism. 'We must return to the happy days when under the guidance of the monks . . . .' cries Henri Bordeaux. France is to become a land of agriculture and peasants, and on this pre-Revolutionary economy the new culture is to be based. The Paris-Soir of
The new true French art of the cinema, imbued with a purified spirit, must produce films taken entirely in natural settings and exalting the return to agricultural life to which France is invoked.
Paris, the intellectual centre of France, has been lost, but genuine French art, inspired by the new national spirit, will flourish in the 'free' unoccupied zone, says the Figaro. The natural result of such a procedure is this sort of thing—'In the bookshops of Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons, and other cities, it is impossible to obtain either fiction, scientific works, or schoolbooks.'
This return to the golden age of feudalism, to the de-industrialization of unoccupied France, is, of course, just what Germany desires. But it is no strange growth of the war defeat. Andre Maurois, whose urbane and delightful sketches of the little-existent fiction-book Englishman in the last war were so successful among the bourgeoisie of both England and France, wrote a few years ago in his Nouvelles Litteraires:
I believe that the great statesman is always simple, elementary, courageous .... I believe he must devote himself unreservedly to the nation of which he forms a part. No free individual without a strong state. To recreate in the young French generation the notion of and respect for the State, this seems to me to be for us, writers, one of the most pressing duties. Yet I am far from despairing of the possibility to fulfil this duly and to emerge from this moral crisis. Youth is full of courage and of goodwill. It only waits for a doctrine.
France has forgotten l'affaire Dreyfus and the tradition of Zola with its eclipse of the Revolution. 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' are equated with 'the happy days when under the guidance of the monks . . , .' What is the significance of this praise of rural life? Hearken to the masters—
And the Petit Journal cries in admiration— 'The future is replete with hope!'
On turning to the Free French movement, one expects something better than this sort of trash, but is bitterly disappointed. The Free French monthly, La France Libre, is the most disappointing piece of literature one could find. Here is the organ of a group of exiles, 'fighting for the deliverance of their Fatherland, etc.', and, sandwiched in among a few articles on 'The Economic Exploitation of the Conquered Territories' and 'The So-called Vichy Constitution' one finds such useless academic balderdash as 'Victor Hugo and the Angels' (by the Director of the French Institute of the United Kingdom) and 'a propos des Anticipations,' this being a discourse by H. G. Wells on his Utopian novels. Again, we find a learned article on 'The Philosophy of Pacifism,' another entitled' Notes on a French Lithograph,' and so on. And the mediocrity of these articles is sometimes as amazing as their actual
Primarily, both in format and in the general tone of the articles, La France Libre is far too academic. It cannot possibly have any contact with the masses upon whom France's future depends. It publishes an appeal by Bernanos (author of Les Grandes Crinetienes sous la lune), one of the Catholic group disgusted by the shameless attempt of its clergy to capitalize on France's misfortunes, an appeal to his countrymen entitled 'Frenchmen, your ancestors were free men,' which is the nearest to a fighting article the whole of the issues have yet contained. But what is the following article?— An academic discussion on whether France was on the eve of a revolution or not.
It is indeed fortunate for France that there are still working, both in the occupied and unoccupied zones, underground organisations which repression cannot completely stamp out. Their activities will gather in effect. As one writer has said—
Most Frenchmen have a good memory, and they have not forgotten that a few years ago the war-cry of the Cagoulards, who have now betrayed France, was 'All power to Petain!'
A Spectre is haunting New Zealand—the spectre of the University Red. He is unpatriotic and addicted to foreign philosophies; his attitude to political and social problems is irresponsible and immature; he is defeatist and unwilling to defend his country against aggression.
Prague University, even under Czech democratic government, gained a certain notoriety for the 'subversive' left-wing opinions of some of its students and lecturers. But when, shortly after the outbreak of war, the students drove the Nazi agents from the college and built barricades in the grounds, the Gestapo could not force its way into the college and had to call on the regular army for assistance. Eventually they shot about a hundred students, sent many more to concentration camps, and closed the University. Perhaps this all goes to confirm the general opinion that university students are apt to advocate action when more mature minds would rather wait and that they are inclined to forget that these actions may have prejudicial effects on their future lives. All this is very true and it was, no doubt, pointed out at the time by the Czech Fascist organisations who had advocated the disciplining of Prague University for many years and who were now sensibly and loyally collaborating with the Nazis.
Similar things happened in Poland, Norway, Holland, and in all the occupied countries. Everywhere the Nazis found university students among their most irreconcilable enemies. Something of the same sort in China must have been responsible for the decision of the Japanese High Command to bomb universities as military objectives. As the Japanese explained, Chinese universities were hot-beds of communism.
It should not be difficult to understand the reasons for this hostility. It is not the cringers and lick-spittles who fill the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchen-wald but people who think and who say what they think. Both of these dangerous habits are acquired at Universities, not by all students but by a sufficient number to give such places a bad name. Fascism, moreover, by the conditions of its existence is driven to implacable hostility to all true culture and learning.
It is unfortunately true that in every country there are people who fear the freedom of speech and thought possible in a democracy. Nowhere is this freedom greater than at a university and consequently no other institution is so vigorously attacked. While we have no desire to label patriotic but misguided citizens as fifth columnists we must observe that the religious and political extreme right-wing which is most hostile to the universities has not distinguished itself by its hostility to the Nazis in the occupied countries of Europe. This is readily understandable for they cannot be very enthusiastic about 'The onward march of the common people of the world towards their just and true inheritance' for which the road will be clear when Britain and the
Ussr have smashed German Fascism.
Unless we are prepared to speak the truth as we see it even at the risk of losing what popularity we possess among such people we shall betray the cause for which over three hundred of our fellow-students are fighting in the Middle East. Not only would our cowardice in this matter play its part in destroying the democracy they are defending but it would certainly fail to assist in the war effort. In this connection it is interesting to compare the cruel and futile campaign for the persecution of pacifists that has been conducted by some organisations with the free and open discussion on this subject that has been continued at V.U.C. throughout the war. The result has been that pacifism at this college has declined in the face not of persecution but of arguments of a superior logical force.
There were voices raised at this college to denounce the Reynaud Government when its savage and anti-liberal campaign was paving the way for the triumph of the men of Vichy and the surrender to the Nazis. Some of us expressed doubts as to the democratic principles of Baron von Mannerheim, 'the champion of Finnish liberty,' in Hitler's phrase, who now marches with the Nazis. Some refused to join in abuse of the great nation whose armies are now, as Mr Churchill put it, 'holding the bridgeheads of civilisation.' For all of these things we were attacked and for none of them we apologise. For on these matters the 'University Reds' were right and their enemies wrong.
Therefore We, the Students of Victoria College University, Deplore the Slanders Which Have From Time to Time Been Brought Against us, and Pledge Ourselves to Maintain of Those Principles of Freedom for Which British, Soviet, and Allied Youth are Giving Their Lives.
(This manifesto was unanimously adopted by the Victoria University College Students' Executive, 2nd September, 1941
The Parching January Sun poured down on eight men reclining on the stubble by a half-completed haystack, eating their lunch. The farmer's wife, who had brought down the food, waited at a short distance with the two children, keeping them away from the horses. Haymaking was a busy time for her, as well as for the men. There was the rush and tear of the days when their own hay was brought in, and the extra work on the farm when her husband was away harvesting for the neighbours to repay their labour. If they could afford to contract but with a mortgage hanging over their heads, it was useless to think of such things.
The farmers were talking politics again. They had heard a Farmers' Union leader a few nights before. Old Mac was giving his views on the forty-hour week.
'Y'see one man's gain is another man's loss, 'he said, 'an' if yer second'ry producer gets a rise in wages it's us that gets it in the neck. These dam 'loafers an' wasters are encouraged ter strike 'n' play up by them rank agitators in the government. I'd like ter 'ave ole' Nash sloggin' for a week in my cowshed-I'd like 'is missus ter 'ave ter get the kids ready for school after milkin' and before the 'ousework. An' w'ere the 'ell would the w'arfies be if the farmers stopped work. They depend on us fer their bread an' existence. They're bitin' the 'and w'at feeds 'em, that's w'at it is.'
'Bitin' the 'and w'at feeds 'em,' repeated the group. You couldn't contradict Mac's logic, if you wanted to.
But the sun was moving towards the heat-hazy Ruahines, and there was work to be done. The group broke up .....
* * * * * *
The wind was chilly round the waterfront. The wintry sun had disappeared behind the Tinakori hills. The two waterside workers, returning home, had to walk fast to keep warm. The elder was talking ....
'Ours is a dangerous job, and an uncertain job. The capitalist 'll say we're earning so much an hour equals so much a week—it's not like that—wish to hell it was. Too much time that we're not workin," then go like mad f'ra bit. Yer wanta go in fer farmin,' Joe, they're who's makin' the money. Betcha there's hardly one without a car an' a radio .... w'at's more there ain't one that wouldn't do us in the eye every time. Look at them now-agitatin' fer the stoppin" of the forty-hour week. Guess they're just exploitin 'us. We're their dam' wage-slaves. They're all right-c'n take time off when they like, work slow as they like . . . . 'They walked in silence for a moment. Perhaps they thought of shabby and undernourished children .... of im
'Well, I go up here; see y'in the mornin'.'
* * * * * *
The long silky car threw itself forward. The driver, cosy in his furs, felt that God was in his heaven and all was right in the world. He had spent an arduous day on the links, but toil has its recompense. He had done the ninth hole in one.
And now the even droning of the high-powered engine seemed to croon his song of success .... It had been a great day. A hole in one .... And the morning's business had gone well .... There were the rents for the watersiders' houses .... and a nice little pile to collect from those farm mortgages .....
'God's in his heaven,' the engine purred, 'All's right with the world.'
'Neither Ministers nor soldiers nor princes are to blame for the world war, but Art for Art's sake. 'When this statement was made by Kurt Hiller twenty-five years ago it must have seemed merely a silly paradox but today it is easier to see the truth behind Hiller's exaggeration and to realise that the divorce between art and social reality, if not in itself important as a cause of war, was a product of those conditions which led also to war. We know that until a definite historical period—in England the end of the 18th century—the art-work was not regarded as something isolated and unaccountable but as a relation between the artist and his patron or public and some of us believe that the reversal of outlook that then occurred was the natural consequence of the change that began somewhat earlier in the system of production. We see in this changed view of the artist's work a reflection of the apparent chaos in economic relations where the bond between consumer and producer, worker and em-ployer, was obscured and the apparent connection was between men and commodities. This leads ultimately to the phenomenon known to the economist as 'commodity fetichism' and to the artist as 'art for art's sake.' In the same way the surrealist who seeks 'freedom' and 'self-expression' by escaping from social relevance into the re-
Unfortunately, however, some of the people who quite correctly condemn the severance of the historic and essential relationship between the poet and society are themselves guilty of scarcely less grave mistakes regarding the nature of art. In the legitimate emphasis which they lay upon the necessity for art—and particularly poetry—to have social importance they are apt occasionally to confuse the function of the poem with that of the political pamphlet. In fact, while the ultimate function of the poet like that of the political theorist is to enable man to alter his environment, he does this not as the theorist does by illuminating and systematizing reality but by a temporary distortion of reality emphasising and deepening the emotional relation between the reader and his surroundings.
That art was of this nature has been more or less intuitively guessed by all great writers. Shelley wrote 'Poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause."William Watson, minor poet though he was, put the matter very happily when he wrote
But only with the development and application of dialectical materialism by Marx and with the illumination that Freudian psycho-analysis cast on the obscurities of the human mind could such statements be developed from flashes of poetic intuition into a coherent philosophy covering not only poetry but all art and having its basis in a scientific outlook on society and the individual.
The development of such a philosophy has been attempted by numerous writers with varying degrees of success, but probably with the greatest subtlety and profundity by Caudwell who sees in art and science two antithetical but complementary techniques in man's struggle with his environment. In the 'mock-world' of the artist and the 'mock-ego' of the scientist he sees illusions necessary for the understanding— and the change that that understanding makes possible and inevitable—of the human instincts and of objective reality. The affective content of an art such as poetry, therefore, will lie not so much in the picture of external reality conjured up as in the 'autonomous complexes' released by the organisation of the words themselves—not so much as mere symbols of reality but with all the emotional associations and 'feeling-tones' gained by social use.
Although Caudwell did not make the point there is implicit in his theory a solution of the argument as to whether the artist fulfils himself by fleeing from reality or facing it. Here there has been too often a tendency to regard the fetters of objective reality— 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth '—as the only alternative to hiding in some aesthetic ivory tower. But the artist does escape, he does build a dream world, and this escape is to discover and express the reality of his own feelings more deeply and by this means to make it possible to change external reality. 'Escapism' of this sort which is socially desirable and necessary—and I would include a prose work such as Joyce's Ulysses in this category—is of course the very reverse of that found in
the popular novel whose technique of movement in time demands the building up of a representation of concrete reality which, as such, should be true to life. Aesthetic gin of this kind offers us a wish-fulfilment only and does not develop the wish itself as does art by bringing our emotions into consciousness and thereby changing them. The gratification offered to the unchanged wish by the baser forms of escapism is analagous to the 'pie in the sky' of the other-worldly religions and serves the same reactionary purpose. The true artist on the other hand is always a revolutionary, frequently despite reactionary political views. However strong his personal attachment to the old order, by making men more fully conscious of themselves and consequently of their environment he causes them to change unsatisfactory conditions. This is one of the contradictions which provide the dynamic force for social change and one which becomes particularly obvious at a time such as the present when every honest art-work, whatever the opinions of its author, contains an implicit condemnation of the system under which it was born. It was not without reason that Marshal Goering remarked, 'When I hear the word "culture" I release the safety-catch of my revolver.'
The artist who disregards the changing world around him and concerns himself either with purely personal or with old and accepted bodies of experience is to be condemned not so much because he is acting in a selfish or cowardly manner but because he cannot by these means secure the emotional revelation and change which alone can be his justification. Even the birds and flowers, regarded by the vulgar as part of the poet's stock-in-trade, are not so much objects in nature as emotional groupings in the minds of men and women and the poet dare not ignore the fact that the content of those groupings is constantly changing. He may weave whatever phantasies he pleases about love in spring but if they are to have the depth, the universality, and the dynamic force that distinguish the dream of the artist from that of the neurotic they must have their basis in the feelings of men and women in the world today—a world of hate and winter in which spring gains a profounder symbolism and love becomes prophetic, not idyllic. If he closes his eyes to the civilisation in travail about him he isolates himself from the suffering, hoping, and striving which is mankind's battle for a fuller life and for the freedom which is the consciousness of that life, and out of which, in pain and in joy, all art is born.
We present to you this evening a picture of the decline of a class, of how its members dream of a new life, but secretly desire the old, for there is death inside them.
Wystan Hugh Auden, in his own words, 'an intellectual of the middle classes.' Like so many of his kin, he approached politics through psychology, a dangerous method which has led to many curious and diverting interpretations of society. These are the only personal facts concerning Auden which we need to know before we can adequately evaluate his work; and, indeed, both facts are reasonably obvious in his every poem and play.
There are two ways in which one can befully aware of the ideology of 'an intellectual of the middle classes' —either to be one or to fall in love with one. The sincere and sensitive among them are openly shocked at our ridiculous society; a few are even vouchsafed a fairly accurate vision of the future world. But it remains a vision, something pleasant to think about, like a good book or a seasoned pipe. They understand that the literal fulfilment of their vision would mean an abrupt end to those institutions which have made them what they are; they know, however, that this end is desirable and inevitable, and logic compels them to realise that the 'lower classes' are the only instrument which can bring about that end. Thus, secretly dreading the impending change, they either clothe the 'lower classes' in helmet and breastplate and idolise their muscles, or else submerge them in a mass of dull statistics.
And their views as to the method of transition are correspondingly tainted. Most are led into the bog of gradualism; others, like Auden, seek to find in middle-class society itself the seeds of its own decay. Capitalist society will not fail because of the strivings of a militant proletariat, as Karl Marx and his Comrades believed; no, by some obscure psychological mechanism, probably associated with the Oedipus Complex, bourgeois society subconsciously desires its own destruction; the bourgeoisie will fall because 'there is death inside them.'
A comforting creed, indeed!—for those who cannot speak with a worker without experiencing a spiritual shudder. Come, then, Comrades-let us rest beneath the Bo-tree, and write verses, and drink good wine, and wait for the Revolution to come.
But all this is merely malicious, and hardly lair. 'The category "bourgeois", 'a penetrating Marxist has said,' is not necessarily a crematory. 'The Catholic Church can claim to have produced perhaps the two greatest modern poets; the liberal bour
Auden's first published work in dramatic form—it can hardly be called a play—is Paid on Both Sides, euphemistically called A Charade. It is brilliant but obscure, studded with private jokes, and probably worthless. It takes some discernment to see behind the allegory a picture of the anarchic struggle of rival capitalist enterprises in modern society, and to translate the younger son's departure for the colonies into imperialist expansion. There are to be found germs of the clowning and choruses which enliven The Dog Beneath the Skin; there are lines and, occasionally, whole passages proclaiming that this poet is no ordinary innovator.
The Dance of Death, a slender play, is Auden's first work designed for actual production. The allegory is thin: Karl Marx is introduced long before he actually appears in the last moments of the piece. The dancer—death—capitalism. The atmosphere throughout is that of the extravaganza and the musical comedy; the parodies of fascism and intellectual mysticism, by which means the dancer seeks to escape death, are real and grim enough. The song to the tune of 'Casey Jones' near the end is a fine lyrical exposition of the Marxist theory of historical materialism, minutely accurate:
But the dancer is sick; he desires death; he sinks to the stage and expires. There is a noise without. Enter Karl Marx, accompanied by the 'Wedding March' and two Communists: Says Marx:
The instruments of production have been too much for him.
He is liquidated.
And all 'exeunt to a Dead March.'
That is Auden's position in a nut-shell. The task of the working class is merely to inspect the body, pronounce life extinct, and get on with creating the New Order.
The Dog Beneath the Skin, the first fruits of the now famous collaboration between Auden and Christopher Isherwood, is good fun, and a little more than that. Auden has written no finer verse than the Choruses opening each scene, and his satire is nowhere more bitter (except perhaps in The Orators) than in the Paradise Park, Lunatic Asylum, and Ostnian Palace scenes. The story, like that of The Ascent of F6, is that of a search—a search through diverse Freudian and political realms to find the lost heir of the manor. The finale is particularly effective, and the final chorus, ending on a frankly Marxist note, very moving. But the medley of doggerel, beautiful verse, clowning, and satire, has no obvious cohesion: the 'message' is there all right, but it does not obtrude sufficiently for all the episodes to hang neatly together upon it.
It is in The Ascent of F6 that the collaborators have achieved their greatest success. We may grant that Ransom is a prig, that the mother-complex intrudes unwarrantably, that the moral is fundamentally reactionary, that the political satire is crude and inaccurate, that it is a play for intellectuals and no others—we may grant all this, and yet recognise that there is a residuum of great beauty and truth in the play.
Virtue and knowledge are the prerogatives of the 'nursery luncheon,' the 'prize-giving afternoon,' the 'quack advertisement,' and there is but one alternative, 'to make the complete abnegation of the will. 'All right—we agree that such a creed means the negation of all collective action, but surely we recognise its partial truth, and treat it as a warning rather than a dogma? There is no need for us to follow Auden all the way.
Nothing more tragic has been written than the Mr and Mrs A scenes; nowhere has the futility of such existence as theirs been more powerfully stated. Yet it is not all sordid: Auden is fair—
This is the audience which follows Ransom and his friends as they make the ascent of the great mountain. Mr and Mrs A do not see what we see, however; they do not see the political contrivances which inspire the expedition, and the subtle mental conflicts which Ransom undergoes, bowed down all the way by his mother-complex. They do not see the strange scene at the summit of the mountain, where Auden uses with great effect the technique employed by James Joyce in the brothel scene in Ulysses. They see none of this; they merely recognise that these climbers are doing something for them, something for which they ask no return:
The prose astonishes us with its catholicity; the parodies of the statesmen, the press, and the blue-blooded Englishwoman are delicious; and there are many lovely passages such as that in which Ransom apostrophises the skull found on the slopes of F6:
Well, Master; the novices are here. Have your dry bones no rustle of advice to give them? Or are you done with climbing. But that's improbable. Imagination sees the ranges in the country of the dead, where those to whom the mountain is a mother find an eternal playground ....
After The Ascent of F6, On the Frontier is an anti-climax. It is a more 'popular 'play, more dramatically cohesive and openly political than any of its predecessors, but it states nothing new, nothing that we do not already know. It was a product of the emotions aroused by the sharpening political conflicts of the late thirties, and though the problems are correctly, though crudely, stated, no solution is offered. The revolution is still proceeding when the curtain falls, and the pacifist-become-revolutionary does not survive.
Auden is an 'intellectual of the middle classes' and has approached, and still approaches, politics through psychology. He is divorced and isolated from society, and is only subconsciously aware of the fact. It is pleasant to dwell in Auden's land, stripping the individual bare and assessing his good and bad points like a horse-dealer—but the pleasure is ephemoral, and the assessment only relative. The indivi-dual is more than a bundle of seething complexes, and it needs more than sensitiveness and psychology to integrate him with society.
Economics was Larry Hendrick's long suit, but he trained for school teaching. He knew enough about economics to know that they couldn't be relied upon to give him a living. When things were O.K. he could always get a job as financial adviser to someone or other who had surpluses to invest; but in depression times nobody had any use for planned economy. But with teaching it was different. People still had kids, even if it was unfashionable to have more than one or two. And funnily enough the community, who didn't seem to care a damn whether they were educated or not, insisted that they go to school when they became too great a nuisance in the home. Larry's sense for economics told him that there was money in teaching, and no risk, unless it was of contaminating the child mind.
But Larry wasn't content to let things take their course. Larry was shrewd. He'd studied the figures for so long that he knew what was coming even before the bookies had worked it out. He could chart a depression before the Minister of Finance thought it necessary to start it off. And Larry was determined not to be caught in the trough when the wave came.
That's where his genius and flair for household economy came in. He had worked it out on the graphs of production and exchange, which covered his pillowslip like the excretions of surreptitious insects, that in ten years time his less intelligent cousins would be shifting bits of ground from one side of a paddock to another for two bob a day. He wasn't going to be in on that; and having had plenty of warning he was able to take every precaution. He wasn't leaving anything to luck, even if school-teaching was pretty safe.
Larry, like Lenin, planned well ahead all right. First he went to the Education Dept. and looked up all the regulations on sole-charge schools. Then, with much forethought, he placed an ad. in the matrimonial column, worded as follows:
And from the answers that rolled in he selected one whose closely written sheet 6 by 4 inches indicated financial shrewdness and a closed mind.
The next step was easy. Larry put his plan into action. Before long his small domicile reeled nightly to the squawks of young Hendricks, who came in illimitable profusion, and came to stay. He'd got their vitamin charts worked out so thoroughly that his losses were light: compared to the great Victorian families the mortality rate was insignificant. And Mrs Larry bore up under the strain remarkably. The whole thing worked like a charm.
Meanwhile the course of depression was beginning to get under way. Before the
He selected the place with the meticulous precision that characterised all his actions—a steep hill-top, way back in the Tararuas; a good five-hours march by pack and pony-track from the nearest pub or P.O. One side was scrub, the other rock; back of this was a small lake, and in front bush a hundred feet high.. When he had built his house out of tent-flap, corrugated-iron and manuka, there wasn't room enough for a respectable out-house, let alone anything else.
Then with the aid of one or two cronies he had picked up on his building expeditions he moved his family: Maggie, his wife; Dorah, aged 12 and 1 month (she really came before the plan), Harroll, 11.3 (indeterminate), Joanie 10.2, Gerry 9, Stan 8.2, Vera 7.2, Larry Junior 6, Little Hilda 5.1, and all the little ones under school age. One way and another he fitted them all in: mostly in bunks, one above the other.
Then as senior parent in the district he undertook to form a Parents' Association. Maggie was the only other member. He acted as chairman himself, but though she was nominally the hon. sec. he took over all that part of the business himself. He wrote in to the Education Dept., saying that there were eight children of school-age in the district, with more coming up the lift, and what were they going to do about it.
The reply came back that they would advertise in the Gazette; that the position was a little out of the way, but in view of the depression they were pretty sure to get someone soon.
He wrote back reminding them that there wasn't a school in the place, but that as a parent himself he'd be prepared to let them use the biggest room in his place, and did they think £1 per week was a reasonable rent.
At first sight there seemed to have been a slip somewhere, when the job was advertised, and it turned out that one of the applicants had better grading than Larry. But Larry, in his capacity as Chairman of the Parents' Association, pointed out that there was no board available except at the Hendricks, and they were full up. So there was really nothing for it except to appoint the applicant who already had residence in the district.
During the depression years Maggie saw to it that the school quota was kept up. As the eldest kids passed school-leaving age the young ones filled the desks. And Larry was pleased as punch. And why not? What with the £1 a week for rent, an extra £50 a year married allowance, and another £50 for country service he didn't do so badly after all.
But when he'd worked out that things were due to boom again he came out of the back-blocks. They went to the movies, and to the Majestic Cabaret, and got raided in a drinking joint; and altogether had a hell of a good time. Until the figures on the pillowslip told Larry that things were going to pinch again. 'I'll give it another eight years, 'he said to Maggie,' and then we'll have to start thinking about how to keep out of the depression we're heading for.'
But that's where Larry reckoned too much on Maggie's placidity. For when he woke up the figures were there all right, sprawled over the pillow like the excretions of surreptitious insects. But Maggie had fled.
One day
Spike policy this year is revolutionary in some respects. Emphasis has been laid less on the year-book or statistical role of the Victoria College Review, and more on its role as a review of the development of student thought. Hence the exclusion of purely record material rather than literary, following a necessary restriction on space.
The predominantly factual nature of the prose entries is due to no personal predilections of the Editorial committee, but to the nature of the entries submitted. This is, we think, highly significant of the present-day student's attitude to the world.
In the selection of a cover design we have again been somewhat unconventional. Our cover this year is symbolic of resistance to fascist aggression—a spirit which pervades this whole issue—and appeared therefore to be more appropriate than others perhaps superior from an artistic point of view.
Finally, thanks are due to the Editorial staff who have worked in a way which (if past bouquets have been as sincere as this one) would appear to be a tradition of Spike committees.
This Society has had a particularly successful year, and attendances at debates have been larger than for some time past—certainly than at any time since the outbreak of war. This is probably connected with the fact that despite the difficulties inevitable in war-time, debates have been held on subjects which are neither innocuous or trivial, but of real interest and social importance. Subjects of debates so far this year are as follows:—"That the evils of Fascism would be reproduced in a Communist state," "That the churches are playing a progressive role in the world today," "That pre-war liberty is a luxury we can no longer afford," "That New Zealand should hitch its wagon to the star-spangled banner," "That the teachings of Christ offer genuine hope to humanity to-day," "That the family in its present form is an institution suited to present-day needs." A debate was held with Training College on the value of University students in the outside world.
Victoria College speaker J. R. McCreary won the Bledisloe Medal with a speech on Harry Holland.
The Plunket Medal contest this year was probably unique in that it was won by a speaker in his first year at V.U.C., and that women speakers were placed second and third. Mr. L. Nathan, the winning speaker, delivered a stirring speech on V. I. Lenin, presenting a view of the relation between the Bolshevik leader and the Revolution new to many of his audience. Second and third were Miss B. Hutchison (Eve Curie) and Miss P. Hildreth (Hans Andersen). Other subjects chosen were T. E. Lawrence (N. G. Foley), John Ballance (B, S. Devine), Dick Sheppard (Dennis Hartley), Ernst Toller (Miss M. S. Sutch), and Josef Stalin (D. G. Castle).
Although none of our sides managed to win a championship, the Club has had a very successful season. Four teams were maintained in the competitions and, in spite of losses throughout the season to the Services, each side finished well up in its grade.
The Senior team was a good one. Young, fast and determined, the forwards were a great pack, with Meads, the captain, outstanding. Shannon, MacLennan and Guy Smith represented Wellington during the year, and Meads and Shielley were also selected but were not able to play. Rowell, Cuming, Murphy and Masters were youngsters who impressed, while Webb finished off a solid year's work by being nominated for a New Zealand Blue. Other nominations were Meads, Shielley, Shannon and Grieg.
Owing to frequent injuries, the backs were never quite able to settle down, but Reilley, Shielley and Swinburne played some excellent football at times, and Stuckey distinguished himself by his tigerish defence. Mummery showed much promise as three-quarters.
The Juniors improved greatly during the season, with K. Smith, A. S. Mason and Coutts their stars.
Not the brilliant combination of former years, the colts, nevertheless, were a solid crew. They had an excellent forward trio in Bridson, R. K. Smith and Caldwell, with Annand and Berg the best of the rearguard.
Congratulations must go to Coach Bill Joll and Skipper Vance Henderson on the splendid showing of the Third B's.
For the first time in seven years we defeated Te Aute in the Annual Match at Waipukurau. Heavy rainfall turned the game into a forward battle, resulting in a personal triumph for Guy Smith, who, playing his last game for the Club, was the best forward on the ground. He was well supported by Murphy and Taylor, and capped off a great day's work with a fine try. The backs seemed unable to adapt themselves to the sticky conditions, but A. S. Mason went a good defensive game at half, while Full-back Berg was nearly faultless. Lloyd Mason received a nasty knock early in the game, but nevertheless he kicked a good pen-anty, and the score, 6—3 in our favour, was a very fair indication of the run of the play.
During the season the Men's Hockey Club has maintained its membership despite forebodings that there would be a shortage of players, due to present day conditions.
Commencing with four teams in the competitions, the Club entered a fifth, and at one stage actually fielded six teams. The sixth team could not, however, be maintained owing to lack of emergencies.
The annual inter-University hockey tournament was this year held in Auckland, and our congratulations are extended to Auckland on winning the Seddon Stick.
The Victoria team tied with Canterbury for third place, losing to Auckland and Otago only. The Club was successful in gaining one N.Z. University blue, N. W. Kiddle playing as right full-back in the match against Auckland representatives.
T. H. Scott once more gained Wellington representative honours, and N. Kiddle was selected for emergency.
The Club as a whole had its usual successful season and many of the players in the lower grades show outstanding promise, and the prospects for the next season appear to be very bright.
The hills and valleys ever beckon and entice us. The lure of the mountains—glittering summits and secluded valleys—draws us unto the arms of mother nature. Filthy mud and sparkling snow, torrential deluge or warm sunshine, forest beauty or roaring cataract—all these, are the attractions for which we long.
The Club has again had an active year. Tough trips and "mighty restful" trips are all enjoyed. Salubrious week-ends like the Tauheranikau at the beginning of the year, and Stan Lowe's farewell at the catchpole, are combined with winter crossing (which, incidentally, didn't cross this year), and winter ascents of Mt. Arete and Mt. Crawford.
Many stalwarts have left our ranks to go overseas—Bill Bradshaw, Arthur Oliver, Paul Powell, and Stan Lowe amongst them—but the Club carries on.
Even as I write, skiing enthusiasts are disporting on the snow slopes at the Chateau Tongariro.
But the Southern Alps provide the highlights. Last summer a trip was made to the Waimakariri Headwaters, and this summer the Club will visit Godley Glacier. A glorious ten days amidst the splendour of New Zealand's highest mountains.
The Society has been again active this year, when one excursion to Wallaceville Veterinary Laboratories, proving extremely popular, was held. Three speakers from outside the College have given interesting and instructive talks: Dr F. B. Shorland on Grasses and their composition; Mr T. Glendinning on Science and Teaching; Mr R. L. Andrew, Dominion Analyst, on The Work of the Dominion Laboratory. The remaining lectures were given by students and staff members.
The Annual Meeting closed with a talk by I. Morton on Genetics and Chemistry, and Mr E. P. White, who left the department soon afterwards, gave a most instructive talk upon the Chemistry of Life.
Attendance this year has been disappointing; with so many students in the department, we think some could have enough interest in a subject they are taking to come along. Not a great knowledge of chemistry is required to understand the majority of the lectures.
The Society also helped to give a farewell to Mr E. P. White on leaving the College, and an ex-chairman, Mr Ongley, made the presentation.
We hope that next year the Society will give more general talks of popular interest, and continue its policy of excursions.
The Law Faculty Club has gained a new lease of life. During the second term a meeting was called to consider the amalgamation of the Law Faculty Club and the Wellington District Law Students' Society. An enthusiastic meeting resulted in a decision to carry on the functions of the two Societies in the name of the Law Faculty Club.
The Club is now taking part in numerous activitie Its debating team in the Wellington Union of Public Speaking Society's competition has to date been successful. Arrangements are being made for the production once again of the Students' Supplement to the New Zealand Law Journal. It seems that as in the past two years Wellington Students must be relied on for the majority of contributions and, although the apathy on the part of the other Colleges is to be deplored, our ability to continue the Supplement under present difficulties augurs well for its post-war future. The Club has been able to conduct a moot and is hoping to arrange an address by Mr Justice Blair.
The ability of the Law Faculty Club to conduct these activities is in no small way due to the help and encouragement of Professors Williams and McGechan, and members of the Faculty join in appreciation of their efforts.
It was prophesied last year that in the season ahead "cricket would not be the same." If this Jeremiad referred to personnel it was certainly justified. For in the Christmas break, a goodly number of players "softly and silently vanished away" and were next heard of in the wilderness of North Rangitikei. The effect of this migration on our championship points was lamentable. Nevertheless, we had an enjoyable season in spite of statistics.
The Social Team did well, the Second Eleven reasonably well. The Seniors and the Fourth Grade found comfort in each other's misfortunes. There was a good attendance at practice nets throughout the season.
Wilson and Grieg were the Seniors' best batsmen, and Grieg and Densem their most successful bowlers. For the Seconds, Bruce and Moody batted well all through, and Moriarty was going well at the end of the season. Christie was the outstanding bowler.
Berg played some hefty knocks for the
Fourths, and was ably supported by Osborne as the season went on. Almost everyone had a fling with the ball and the wickets were shared out all round. In the Social Team Moore and Campbell were the hopes of the side.
The Swimming Club last season carried out its full programme of activities as in previous years. Although most of the older Club members among the men were missing, and the Club membership dropped slightly as a result, the weekly Club nights were thoroughly enjoyed by those present.
At Tournament, Marie Malcolm gained third place in the women's 100 yards breast-stroke, which was won in record time. Dudley Lane from Massey gained third place in the men's 100 yards freestyle, and the relay team— Marie Malcolm, Jo Pound, Neville Turnbull and Dudley Lane—gained third place. The team, although faced with the difficulty of training in very cold water, turned out regularly each morning at 7 a.m. Members of the team were Marie Malcolm, Betty Walton, Jo Pound, Bruce Hands, Stewart Scoones, John Gillies, Neville Turnbull, and Dudley Lane.
The Club's Championship Cups were both won by freshers, Margaret White taking the women's cup and John Shanahan the men's. The Points Cup was won by Bruce Hands.
The polo team was very successful towards the end of the swimming season, under the capable leadership of Bob Hyslop.
Although a great many of the Club's members are now overseas, the season has been both a good and a successful one.
Opening Day Tournament, held on September 21st, and Freshers' Tournament, held on March 8th, were the usual successful functions.
Owing to the reduced number of Club members, only three teams were entered in the W.L.T.A. Inter-club Competitions. As it was, the two men's teams were often difficult to field. The first men's team and the second women's team came up against some stiff opposition and were unfortunate in many of their losses.
The Inter-Varsity Tournament provides the brightest spot of the season for the Tennis Club. After many practices at Miramar the following were chosen to represent V.U.C. at Easter: Men—R. W. Baird, J. M. Cope, R. Larson, J. Brown, Ladies—G. Rainbow, N. Marshall, P. Monkman, B. Marsh, G. Macmorran.
After the first day's play on the Saturday, V.U.C. had a number of finalists and semi-finalists. Play was not resumed until Thursday, because of rain, and even then it was on the Paekakariki courts. The only titles won were the Men's Doubles by R. Baird and J. M. Cope, and the Men's Singles by J. M. Cope, and we congratulate them both.
This Society has built up a well merited reputation for interesting topical talks on a wide variety of scientific subjects, and this year is proving no exception. Apart from their educational value, the Society's activities provide a much needed link between members of the faculty and students, and the opportunities given for informal discussions are most welcome.
The war has so greatly affected the availability of photographic materials that the activities of the Photographic Club have had to be greatly curtailed. Added to this, the Geology department took over our darkroom at the beginning of the year. This was a very great blow, especially as the Club had just obtained a very good modern enlarger. It is hoped to find new quarters in the not far distant future.
Some lectures have been held during the year, together with a second revival of the film "October." Difficulty however, is being experienced in arranging: meetings, several committees having been called up for military service since the last annual meeting. It is to be hoped that the administration of the Club will reach a more stable form next year.
With a more than usually numerous band of enthusiasts the Basketball Club seemed likely, this year, to have an active and successful season. At the N.Z.U. Tournament held in Wellington at Easter, the Victoria rep. team, playing with outstanding speed and precision, all but succeeded in winning the Shield from the more experienced Aucklanders.
After Easter the team was unfortunate in losing two of its members, and later in the season, handicapped by a lack of training, it never quite recaptured Tournament form. However, the standard of play was high. The combination of the centres was excellent, their passing quick and reliable, and the defence proved formidable in breaking up tactics of the opposing backs. The goals were at a disadvantage through changes in their trio.
The second team seemed the most promising which the Club had produced for some time, and was entered in the Senior B Grade, but it too suffered from inadequate practice and from changes in players and position of pray.
Pixie Higgin again won a N.Z.U. Blue, and V.U.C. Blues were awarded to Pixie, Beryl Marsh and Caroline Abraham, to whom we offer our heartiest congratulations.
The Dramatic Club has had a badly curtailed year, losing most of the first term in camp. However, it started off as soon as extrav. was
over with a most amusing reading of Shaw's "Arms and the Man," under the direction of Pat Hildreth.
Later in the second term a one-act play evening, followed by a supper and dance, was given. The plays we The Road of Poplars" (Vernon Sylvaine), product by Irene English, and "The Six of Calais" (Bernard Shaw), by John McCreary, with an interlude in the good old style "Her Father's Pride" or "Virtue Shines Brighter than Gold," written and produced by Dennis Hartley.
"The Six" was chosen to represent V.U.C. at the inter-University College Drama Festival, inaugurated that year at Canterbury College and run conjointly with Joynt Scroll, but Mac's translation to other regions made this impossible, and it was left to Irene English to produce a new play in nine days. Accordingly, Maeterlinck's "The Intruder," went down, and was placed third. As the festival is to be held in Wellington next year, it is to be hoped that the College will support it to the full.
A new departure this year is the inauguration of a series of readings by new members, followed by a discussion and a lecture by an outside authority on drama and dramatic technique. These meetings are held on alternate Wednesday evenings in the Music Room, and it is hoped that every V.U.C. student interested in drama will come along, but those who feel they have more to learn and those who are sure they know it all, to criticise and to learn. With the inevitable loss of nearly all of our most experienced members, this innovation should prove invaluable and we hope it will be continued next year.
In common with the other Clubs in the College we have found that most of our men members have been claimed for Territorial or overseas service. Yet in spite of this we have had a pleasant year.
We began the year with a social at one of the member's homes, and we had a jolly evening. Fortunately this coincided with the visit of our Travelling Representative, the Rev. Basil H. Williams. After this we had a Sunday Tea at St. Giles' Presbyterian Church. One of our ex-members, C. Becroft, M.A., was with us and spoke at the tea. There were also several Otago College E.U. men present who were in camp at Trentham.
Several of our members went to the Annual Conference which was this year held in Christ-church at St. Andrew's College. The House and grounds were ideal, and in between studies and meetings we saw a good deal of Christ-church, and were taken all over Canterbury College. After Conference several of us took part in the Linwood Mission, the students of the four Colleges combined with the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist Churches.
During the Winter Term the chief speaker of the Conference visited us: The Rev. Loane, Vice Principal of the Theological College (Anglican), Sydney. We held a Friday night meeting at the College, a tramp, followed by tea at the home of Beatrice Bade, then a social evening and a short address by our guest on Saturday. On Sunday we had a tea in the College Caf., and then had a service at the Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church.
The other activities of the Winter Term have been a Bible Study every Friday night and a Daily Prayer Meeting. We were invited to the Teachers' Training College on the occasion of the visit of Basil Williams, where we had an excellent tea followed by a service.
Considering that it has been the second year of war it has been a very happy one in our Union.
At a committee meeting of this Club, held towards the end of
There was no activity at all in the
The most outstanding features of the
The Club is indeed fortunate in having the use of the basement at Weir House for changing and showering, and to the Weir House Management Committee goes the Club's thanks. The Club is also grateful to R, G. Freeman who so tirelessly coached members throughout the season, and who ungrudgingly gave his time and valuable advice whenever called upon.
Awards of trophies for the season were made to the following Club members:—
Dunbar Cup (most points in Open Competition)—J. Sutherland.
Heinemann Cup (most improved athlete)— G. Rowberry.
Ladies' Cup (best performance at Inter Faculty)—J. Sutherland.
Te Oram Cup (most points at Inter-Faculty)— D. Tossmann.
Old Members' Cup (most points at Club'smeetings)—D. Tossman.
During the year we have been fortunate in having Dr. T. Z. Koo, Travelling Secretary of the World Student Christian Federation, visiting us. Two meetings were held, one at the home of Mr. Cochran, during the vacation, and one in the Music Room, unfortunately on the last night of extrav. They were useful to those attending them. A report of the big meeting appears in "Salient," in the second issue of the Second Term.
We have had two functions for freshers at the beginning of Term, one which was addressed by the President of the Students' Association last year, and a Saturday walk at the beginning of this. A Bible Study group has also been held for full timers on St. Luke's Gospel. During the year there have been a number of Saturday evening meetings on the following topics: "Revivalist Religion, is it retentive?", "The place of prophecy in the Christian Life," "Nationality and the Kingdom of God," "Fate and Personal Will," and "Christianity and Sex." We also combined with the Wellington District Council of the S.C.M. in a day of prayer held at Vivian Street Baptist Church, which was addressed by Mr F. Engel, our travelling secretary. He also addressed a meeting in A4 on the history of the S.C.M. during the Second Term.
But in spite of all these activities, the year has been a most disappointing one, both from the lack of effect the Movement has had on the University and from the non-increase in members, which one normally associates with a growing and developing movement of any sort. In spite of these setbacks, the executive looks forward with confidence to the future.
This year the V.U.C. Women's Hockey Club has been on the upgrade. For the last two years, there has been considerable lack of interest in the Club, but this year, under the capable and enthusiastic captainship of Daisy Filmer, the Club has shown something of its old vigour. At the beginning of the season, the shortage of old members of the Club made it impossible to enter a team for the N.Z.U. Hockey Tournament.
A systematic drive for new players was made, with gratifying results, and half way through the second term, another team was entered in the Wellington Association Competitions, this meaning that V.U.C. had two women's hockey teams for the first time in three years. The successes of the teams, although not numerous, have been most encouraging, and the standard of play is undoubtedly rising. With a little more practice together, the Senior team should manage to regain Senior A Grade next year. The Junior team, though lacking in experience as yet, makes up for skill with an enthusiasm which portends greater things in the future.
Regular and frequent "request" recitals have been maintained throughout the first two terms of the session, with a total attendance of some 450 persons. This much may be reported at the time of writing.
It is expected that during the third term the "request" recitals will continue, and in addition regular programmes, lists of which have been posted on the notice boards, will be played twice a week.
We take this opportunity of drawing your attention to the fact that The Gramophone is There for the Use of Students. There is a catalogue in the Music Room of the available records, which you are at liberty to consult at any time. Make known any requests you have to a member of the Gramophone Committee, who will arrange with you a convenient time for a recital.
It is to be noted, however, that recitals must be arranged for at least a day ahead, and preferably at longer notice. This allows time for the recital to be advertised for the benefit of others who might also like to hear the music you have selected. Secondly, we must remind you that the actual records and machine are to be handled and used by Committee members only.
Our policy is to encourage people who want to come out for an afternoon's exercise without any wish for competitive running, and the Idle Along Pack has been popular this year.
On the other hand, Frank O'Flynn, energetic club captain, has not encouraged loafing in the fast pack, and by his own personal example has inspired his team-mates to mighty efforts. By running second in the Provincial Championships, he recorded the best performance since the inception of the Club of any V.U.C. harrier in this race. The Club's veterans turned out at Dannevirke, and magnificent running by Frank O'Flynn, Ross Scrymgeour, Myles O'Connor and Dick Danniell resulted in our returning with the Anderson Trophy.
Twenty-two successive days of rain had left the Silverstream course in a terrible condition when 24 runners from the four Colleges were sent off for the start of the N.Z.U. Cross Country Championships on August 23rd. Frank O'Flynn took the lead in the first mile from Coombes (O.U.) and Kirkwood (O.U.). Dick Daniell, Peter de la Mare and G. Rowberry were bunched together and at the end of the first lap were running 9th, 10th, and 11th, with Ian Morton and Ralph Fenton further back. Meanwhile Frank O'Flynn had increased his lead from Coombes and finished
strongly to win by 35 seconds, becoming Victoria's third individual title-holder since the inception of the race. G. Rowberry, never at his best over rough country, ran magnificently to move up to seventh place, with Peter de la Mare and Dick Daniell just behind him. But with four V.U.C. men in the first ten, the fate of the trophy was still in doubt till Marshall (Otago's fourth man) just beat I. Morton in a desperate sprint to the tape, giving Otago the Dixon Trophy by one point from Victoria, in the closest finish in the history of the race.
The final result was:—
1. Otago (Coombes 2, Kirkwood 5, Stafford 6, Marshall 12). Total 24.
2. Victoria (O'Flynn 1, Rowberry 7, de la Mare 8, Daniell 9). Total 25.
Once again the Club's many friends have extended hospitality to us, and to them all we are deeply grateful. We especially would like to mention Mr G. F. Dixon, Club President and donor of the Dixon Trophy, whose continued interest and goodwill leaves us greatly in his debt. Our best wishes go with all those past and present members of the Club who have gone or are about to go overseas.
Tramping up to Field Hut or to the Tauheranikau Valley, is a privilege enjoyed usually by only the Tramping Club, but this year the Biological Soc. emerged from under a bushel, and visited these places too. And how much more interesting it is when the flora and fauna beckon so enticingly; when under dead logs and fallen leaves, the teeming animal life is revealed. And happy is the wag hunter.
Guided by Mr Zotov of the Plant Research Dept., botanists had the time of their lives on these weekend excursions, and we must thank him for his keen interest in the Society.
Titahi Bay was visited one Sunday—a glorious day on which the snow-capped peaks of the Tararuas provided a delightful background to the rock faces teaming with marine life. Wainui Valley was also visited, but this was not such a good day.
For the entertainment of Biologists, Mr D. Hobbs of the Marine Dept. talked very inter-estingly on trout, Dr H. H. Allan, Director of the Botany Division, described the different ways of seed dispersal, and Mr Salmon, of the Dominion Museum, enlightened us as to the harmful and helpful ways of insects.
Two film evenings helped things along, and altogether it was a very successful year.
The Easter Tournament, held in Wellington this year, was the culminating point in the Club's activities, activities featuring keen and strenuous training on the part of most members. Training for some began in January of the New Year—others were forced to rely on Territorial routine for their training. In March, more joined in, but a keen half dozen or so were about all who attended the training nights. Tim Tracy's gymnasium was utilized for this purpose, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking him for this, and for the expert way in which he trimmed us into shape.
A Thursday night, and Wellington College gymnasium was not packed to capacity. Nor, indeed, were there entries for all the weights. The programme, however, was supplemented by exhibition bouts from local gymnasiums, and a satisfying evening's entertainment was provided.
The result of everything was that G. Cuming (light-heavy), A. Doak (middle), B. Jacobson (welter), D. Cohen (light), D. Muir (feather), N. Perry (bantam), represented us at the inter-College Tournament. Congratulations to B. Jacobsen (N.Z. Blue also), D. Muir, and G. Cuming, who received Blues.
Club Captain—R. G. Scrimgeour.
Secretary-Treasurer—M. M. Goldstone.
Committee—D. Tossman, R. M. Daniell, J. Sutherland, H. Bowyer, I. Morton.
Captain—Pixie Higgin.
Vice-Captain—Durie Maysmor.
Secretary-Treasurer—Lynette Robinson.
President—W. Dawbin.
Secretary-Treasurer—R. L. Oliver.
Committee—Miss E. McKenzie, R. Cumber, M. T. TePunga.
Club Captain—H. Greig.
Secretary—R. Oliver.
Treasurer—R. P. Harpur.
Committee—G. Cumming, B. Jacobsen, A. Doak, D. Cohen.
Chairman—I. D. Morton.
Secretary—B. R. Jones.
Committee—R. A. Scott, P. B. de la Mare, P. Macdonald.
M. L. Boyd, G. A. Eiby, G. W. Turner,
Club Captain—G. Craig.
Secretary—D. N. Y. Olsen.
Treasurer—D. H. Bray.
Committee—F. R. Bray, A. O'Brien, G. Richards, M. Christie.
President—Professor F. L. W. Wood.
Chairman—A. F. T. Chorlton.
Vice-Chairman—Miss B. Hutchison.
Secretary—B. S, Devine.
Treasurer—V. O'Kane.
Committee—Misses E. Johnson and M. S. Grinlinton, Messrs. H. Witheford, D, Castle.
President—F. R. Duncanson.
Secretary—Ruth I. Sanders.
Treasurer—A. G. Stewart.
Committee—Misses Jean Brown and Beatrice Bade; Messrs. H, Hart and T. Kirkby.
Secretaries—R. Waite, Miss J. Bogle.
Committee—Misses M. O'Connor, K. Ross, Messrs. G. Eiby, Dennis Hartley, G. Higgin, K. J. Hollyman, F. Rule, G. W. Turner.
Club Captain—D. Beresford.
Secretary—S. N. Braithewaite.
Treasurer—A. Ives.
Committee—K. D. Kiddle, G. Shaw, H. Scott, B. B. Hands.
Captain—Daisy Filmer.
Secretary—Janet Bogle.
Treasurer—Sheila Mason.
Committee—Shirley Conway, Pat Miles.
Faculty Adviser—Professor Wood.
President—F. Corner.
Secretary—Jas. W. Winchester.
Committee—Ann Eichelbaum, G. W. Turner, H. Witheford.
President—W. F. Kerr.
Vice-Presidents—J. E. Leahy, L. G. Rowe.
Secretary—C. S. Ramage.
Committee—J. B. O'Donnell, B. B. Hands, R. J. Hyslop.
Chairman—C. C. Aikman.
Secretary-Treasurer—K. G. Gibson.
Committee—R, W. Burnard, W. J. Boyd, J. D. Pottinger, I. L. Moore.
President—F. Corner.
Secretary—D. Cohen.
Committee—J. W. Winchester, G. W. Turner. M. T. Mitchell.
President—G. A. Eiby.
Secretary-Treasurer—B. S. Devine.
Committee—Messrs. Marwick, Macdonald, and Rashbrooke.
President—E. D. Grinstead.
Vice-President—Miss Millicent Ince.
Corresponding: Secretary—W. H. Newall.
Recording Secretary—Miss Marie Malcolm,
Treasurer—G. Ward.
Committee—P. Graham, Misses I. Langford and P. Ralph.
Club Captain—R. J. Hyslop,
Deputy Club Captain—B. B. Hands.
Women's Club Captain—J. Maysmor.
Secretary—R. T. Shannon.
Committee—S. T. H. Scoones, Misses M. E. Malcolm, B. E. Walton, J. Pound.
President—R. Rashbrooke.
Secretary—R. Hannan.
Committee—Doris Johanneson, Beryl Taylor, T. H. Scott, A. Edwards.
Chairman—R. N. Collin.
Vice-Chairman—B. Butchers.
Secretary-Treasurer—B. R. Jones.
Chief Guide—A. O. MacLeod.
Committee—J. Witten-Hanna, P. Mitchell, R. L. Oliver, Miss P. Monkman.
President—C. C, Aikman.
Secretary—G. D. Smart.
Treasurer—A. D. MacLennan.
Committee—M. T. TePunga, R. M. Daniell, M. O. Ekdahl.
President—E. J. Budge.
Chairman—K. J, McNaught.
Secretary—G. MacMohran.
Treasurer—R. W. Baird.
Committee—Misses D. Maysmor, N. Marshall, G, Rainbow and F. Joyce; Messrs. T. Elliot, M. O'Connor, W. S. Mitchell and N. Foley.
President—B. E. Murphy.
Club Captain—A. P. O'Shea.
Deputy Club Captain—H. E. Moore.
Treasurer—G. A. Cooney.
Secretary—O. J. Creed.
Committee—F. R. Macken, J. P. MacMay, R. G. Cumming, A. MacLennan, A. E. M. Greig.