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"This I have read in a book," he said, " and that was told to me,
And this I thought that another man thought of a student of chemistry."Adapted From Rudyard Kipling.
We be wayfarers together, O Students, treading the same thorny paths of Studentdom, laughing at the same professorial jokes, grieving in common over the same unpalatable " swot," playing the same games, reading the same indigestible books. Let us also pause for a few moments together and stretch out a hand of welcome to a small white stranger, that has come amongst us with little preliminary under the name of The Spike. Hast thou The Spike, fellow-student? If not, I pray thee make all haste to procure it, less worse things befall thee, and thou art impaled on its venomous point.
Much time and trouble was taken in choosing an eligible name for this venture. The idea was to hit on one that would cling in the elusive student memory, and, at the same time, would suggest the idea that our magazine is to be run as a free lance, dealing out to each and all their just meed of blame or praise without fear, prejudice, or favour. We would have it said of us in the words of Kipling (again slightly adapted)—
We humbly advance our opinion that The Spike fulfils these qualifications. We hope to be able so to point it that it will stick, not only in the most indiarubber-like memory, but also in anything and everything else against which it is turned.
But we do not wish our pricks to penetrate more than skin deep. We should be sorry indeed to write anything that had not the saving grace of good humour in it, or, in the exhilaration of the skirmish, to wound, however slightly, the feelings of a single soul. Remember then, all ye at whose expense we have presumed to joke, that we laugh with you in good-fellowship rather than at you, and therefore we pray you join your smile with ours if perchance you should recognise yourselves in these pages.
Our aims are threefold. Firstly, to make The Spike an official record of the doings of the College, and of all clubs and institutions in connection with it. Secondly, to bring out the dormant talent, perhaps even genius, in both art and literature, that cannot help but exist, and too often lie hidden, amongst two hundred University students. In so doing, it is our ambition to attain to as high a standard of literary excellence as possible. Thirdly, and perhaps our chiefest ideal, to strengthen the bonds of union and goodfellowship amongst us, to help us to take more interest in the social life of the College and our fellow-students, to foster that brotherly comradeship which, to our mind, is the chief charm of studentdom. In doing this we humbly advance the suggestion that the presence of The Spike will, in some measure, compensate for the absence of a home of our own.
In pursuance of our first object we extend a very hearty welcome to our new professor, and earnestly hope that the pleasure with which we hail his arrival will be mutual now that he has had time to take stock of the winning ways of New Zealand students. Professor von Zedlitz arrived when he was most needed, not, indeed, by the students, for we were especially fortunate in having the services of Professor Brown and Mr Joynt as French and German lecturers respectively but on account of these two gentlemen themselves who, for more than two years, have been doing, without sparing themselves, the work of three men, and indeed, all the Professors are still bearing the double burden of two subjects unflinchingly.
We in common with every loyal son of the British Empire, have this month been stirred to our souls by the glad pealings of the peace-bells, and though these good tidings affect us no more than any other of the five million " sons of the blood " of Australasia, yet, so great an event it is in our life times, that we cannot let the occasion go by in silence, we, who long for the day when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, when we, or our successors, shall come, not to bring The Spike, but a meeker, less virulent periodical; and when we can say, in the words of one even greater than Virgil:
"
Tu regere imperio populos Britanne memento
Hac tibi erunt artes pacisque imponere morem
Parcere subject is et debellare superbos."
Nearly fifty years ago, when Euphemia and Selina were respectable christian names, and bowler hats were worn, King Dick, corpulent, mass-bearded, wary, having stormed into power, sat astride a horse on an Old Clay Patch. With Sir Robert Stout, he had helped to found a University College in Wellington, the Capital City. There remained the question of a site, and a building.
As the College was coming into formal existence, far away in antipodean waters, and at home, there were stirrings of patriotic pomp as men poured out in ships to South Africa. Swinburne lay in a madhouse, as mad as a March hare; Bernard Shaw was beginning to strut the stage. Here in New Zealand, Edith Searle Grossman was writing about the intellectual Englander, the exile in a primitive country; William Satchell was searching the North Auckland gumfields for material for a novel. Victorianism was going out, and Victoria herself had only a little time to live. Vigorous writers were singing the praises of social advancement. The alert Left was appearing. By the skin of her teeth, this College gained the name of Victoria.
The student group in this new College did not become articulate for three years. In The Spike. Very shortly, names formidable in College literary circles were appearing in these pages—Seaforth Mackenzie, F. A. de la Mare, Siegfried Eichelbaum. It became established as a biennial production—in June the literature, in October the statistics. There were extravagant details of Club activities, mute portraits, some Georgian verse, much frolic, the most extraordinary-looking sports' teams, and a (very rare) scratch of original writing. It became patterned and formalised. The chapter-heads, drawn very early in the piece by the late Fanny Irvine Smith, remained unaltered for years. Well-known students and officials were celebrated in random verse which delighted to pun on such words as 'stout,' 'ostler.' ' hector,' 'gamble,' and 'beer.' To us, in
I have been temerarious enough to revert to the original title—The Spike—to use the baptismal name again. Why should it be thought necessary to revert to a title which has been out of use for several years, and which, so I am told, cannot help but be typographically ugly? Let me quote from The Spike, Vol. 1., No. 1:
Much time and trouble was taken in choosing an eligible name for this venture. The idea was to hit on one that would cling in the elusive student memory, and, at the same time, would suggest the idea that our magazine is to be run as a free lance, dealing out to each and all their just meed of blame or praise without fear, prejudice, or favour ..." " Hast thou The Spike? was the cry. It was never a Spike, or any old Spike, or just Spike; it was The Spike. Except for the saving of a little printer's ink, there seems nothing to justify the action by an Editor in the late
Since Vol 1., No. 1. appeared, there have been three Memorial Numbers—a War Memorial Number (
It seemed a grand scheme to invite everybody who had ever put pen to paper to write something, and pick out the choicest cherries. And that's precisely what I did. To a museum in Canada, and a parliamentary lobby in Finsbury; to apartment houses in Paris, and universities all over the earth, the letters went out. Dons, lawyers, fellows, doctors, professors, businessmen, students, housewives, all were paged. The result, of course, had they all answered, would have been disastrous. But, as previous Editors have found again and again, there was no danger of that. One has to print everything that comes, even if it stumbles in on one leg.
In spite of heavily sounded warnings, when I began, I felt that on this occasion a whole field lay spread before me—like a huge orchard, with ripened, inviting fruit. But, once bitten, the fruit tended to freeze. Inside it proved taut and dry and grey. Slough off the persevering skin, where the old purposes are fought out by the familiar opponents—take out the conscientious sagas of hockey and cricket and football—and, save for a loyal, luscious pip or two, the new fruit glitters rosily in somebody else's oasis. What is here is a very mixed basket.
A peculiar and impressive difficulty was the appearance side by side with this small magazine, of a formal history of the College by Dr J. C. Beaglehole, and a new edition of The Old Clay Patch. I am anticipating that the former will trace the rise of the College and its institutions, re-fight the battles of the sites, and resurrect the various crises over freedom of speech and university reform; and that the latter will reproduce the odes and poems and songs which perpetuate the memory of Seaforth Mackenzie, Siegfried Eichelbaum, Hubert Church, J. C. Beaglehole, Marjory Hannah, Ronald Meek and the rest. But it was left to these pages of mine to record the latest and newest thoughts of all Victorians who still live and who were accessible. The generations were meant to speak with their own voices; to say what they think of the sights and sounds of our mid-century years. The History will tell of them, The Old Clay Patch will repeat what they used to think. I wanted them here to speak from the past about us. That is the magazine's primary raison d'etre. With a disappointing response to my appeal, it would be foolhardy to suggest that this coat-of-many-colours does so more than patchily. Some reprinted broadcast talks span the years; a group of retired members of the staff document the earliest days; some of our best younger poets are represented; there is a whiff of hard thought from Oxford; and a couple of short stories. But altogether, this section is rather like the exhausted literary leavings of fifty eight-month years of exasperated, if adventurous, effort.
The Roll of Honour was an adventure in research. It was undertaken primarily to ensure that those who died would not be forgotten as long as Victoria College exists; and its grievous length testifies to the very severe sacrifice made by the student group during the struggle with Fascism. These men lie in many a battlefield of which they did not dream. In Greenland and Guadalcanal, in the Atlantic and the Azores, at Trieste and Tripoli, they died while serving their country. Our College will always speak with reverence of them and of their deeds.
Considerable care has been exercised that no names should have been omitted, or included in error. In this connection, I should like here to express my very great thanks to the three Service Departments for readily supplying me with complete Casualty Lists, and for checking the names that I submitted to them; and to the small band of helpers who assisted in the prodigious task of setting the complete College Rolls from
It may be that someone willing to undertake the task of compiling a World War II Memorial Number will be found. For that reason, the names are published here under the Service headings. It is not possible in this issue to publish further details, but those which have been assembled are left in the hands of the Victoria University College Records Officer.
I should like to record my sincere thanks to those who conscientiously and laboriously completed club histories; to my assistant editors and Mr J. B. Trapp for substantial help in the selection of plates, the arrangement of material, and the reading of proofs; and to Messrs Angus and Robertson, Sydney, for their permission to reprint the short story and poem by the important young ex-New Zealander, Douglas Stewart.
And with that, I send this prim, many-coloured birthday cake to its dubious fate, confident that the bright young literary things will not read the annals of the sports' clubs, equally confident that the leather-hunters will scorn the verse; and supremely certain that all will want the Editor's scalp. That is the price one must pay for helping in a Jubilee venture.
The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap, trashy, and impermanent—this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom.William James
Some attending the Jubilee Celebrations were present at the ceremonies connected with the opening of the College. They are the favoured few who are able to survey in the span of one memory the long journey from
But I have seen the College grow from small things to great, have known the foundation professors and the founder of the College, Sir Robert Stout, have been privileged to watch academic leaders and teachers who brought rare gifts to the College and spent themselves in its service, I have known on the field, in the social hall, and in the classroom generations of students who came not only to take what Victoria had to offer but to render that service without which the work of the university would be poor, stale and unprofitable.
To me therefore has been allotted the task of writing this foreword; I shall content myself by trying to answer two questions: What has the College done for the Community? What has the Community done for the College?
Even a cursory survey of the past five decades shows clearly enough that the College has made a very worthy contribution to the life of the people. Men and women of Victoria have occupied, and are occupying, positions of responsibility in all spheres of public life. In Parliament and in local body administration, on the Bench and at the Bar, in the pulpit and in the Church Assembly, in the educational life of the country (primary, secondary, university), in the Public Service, in the great Social Services (public and private), in peace and war, we find in posts of influence men and women who look to The Old Clay Patch with gratitude and affection. Nor must we overlook the labours of the common man or woman, those who by their conscientious and self-denying efforts carry on their shoulders the essential work of the community and bear forward the great traditions of the race.
We may obtain more specific replies to our first question if we consider with what success Victoria has performed the essential functions of a university. The first function of a university is to be the guardian of the truth, it is the custodian of the standards and ideals of the intellectual life of the community. It must try to ensure that what is proved true is conserved, that all that is based on error is exposed and eliminated. It cannot be claimed of any institution that it never failed on some occasion to attain this end, but the record of the College has been an enviable one. There has never been a traditional point of view that all were expected to take; there have always been dissenting groups which have, except on very rare occasions, been given full tolerance. At least twice in its brief history the College has been called upon to defend academic freedom, and, once, to resist the pressure of traditional methods. In face of these challenges, the College did not fail. It is not easy for an institution whose resources come mainly from the State to be really independent, but again, with very few exceptions, both the leaders of the State and the members of the College have not lacked sympathy and toleration.
The means by which a university inspires regard for truth are two: teaching and research. It is not to be expected that all the members of any university staff will be strong in both these aspects of its work. Happy is the institution whose collective staff is prepared in both parts. Every university must have those who are able to stimulate its students to distinguish between the true and the false and to follow the true whithersoever it may lead. Its main purpose must be to train its members to think clearly and honestly; it is not part of its duty to determine what they should think. "The full responsibility of a university is discharged only when its students are taught to be free-thinking, free-acting, independent persons and every movement calculated to indoctrinate youth with special social theories or with a special kind of political philosophy is subversive of the needs of a democratic society." In this regard the College record has been good. A College which has had on its staff men like the four foundation professors and von Zedlitz, Kirk, Salmond, Picken—to mention only some—is a College than can hold its head high.
It is a common story that in the early years academic tradition based on external examination, under-staffing, and lack of facilities, made research difficult. Yet Easterfield began with research technique, and the contributions of men like Salmond, Maclaurin, Sommerville, Laby, Cotton are those of which any university might be proud, and have developed in the College the spirit of research of which the strongest evidence is provided by the achievements of successive generations of students, a number of whom are now members of the staff engaged in fundamental investigations.
What has the community done for the College?
If we treat the term "community" distributively, as the logicians say, and consider what individual members of the community have done for Victoria we shall find it has had, and still has, many good friends.
There must be strong vitality in an institution that can attract the voluntary administrative labours of such men as Sir Robert Stout, Sir Francis Bell, Sir Hubert Ostler, Clement Watson, Phineas Levi, and the many others who spared neither time nor effort in the management of an institution which, especially in the earlier years, was expected to do so much with so little. Among our good friends also are our benefactors, who, by their aid, have widened and deepened the life of the College. The magnificent gift of William Weir for the foundation of a men's hostel deserved a better fate at the hands of political leaders than a refusal to honour the pledge that a subsidy would be paid. This default has narrowed the possible achievements of Weir House and made its service as a home for students a much more difficult task. Scholarships, prizes, gifts to the Library, are all evidence of the generous sympathy the work of the College has aroused. This good feeling has not been confined to New Zealand as is shown by the very welcome support given to the Library, the Art Room and the Department of Music by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. But, in addition to those who have given us material assistance, there have been many good friends who supported the College authorities in difficult days when questions of principle were at stake. This support will long be gratefully remembered by a College which was strengthened and held constant in its purpose by the unselfish encouragement of many.
To all these groups succeeding generations of students will owe much and from these deeds will draw inspiration.
In the collective sense of the logician, community covers two groups: the State and the civic community. The records show that the Government has been increasingly prepared to provide the sinews of war, but, at the moment, its good will is limited by the lack of materials and labour, without which additional accommodation so urgently needed cannot be provided. The University can only hope that, when things return to normal, the State will provide the capital expenditure and annual grants that will enable Victoria to be as well provided with accommodation, staff and equipment as similar institutions in other parts of the British Commonwealth.
As far as the Corporation of the City of Wellington is concerned it can hardly be said that it has discovered the University. It is true that since
Perchance in a year of Jubilee we are too prone to cast our eyes backward. Man, however, sits on the saddle-back of time and looks before and after. It has been truly said "A nation that thinks in terms of tomorrow moves on; a nation that thinks in terms of yesterday perishes." The world of the future will belong to the men and women whose understanding of their world and their fellows is based on knowledge, and who have the courage and character to build upon it.
"
When the Golden Jubilee arrives with its added laurels few indeed who shared the high hopes of the foundation will join in the songs of praise. This Silver Jubilee is the last of those great anniversaries at which the generations of Victoria College may expect to mingle with the very founders..."The Spike, Easter1924 .
At the silver jubilee an attempt was made to put into words, and to assess, the contribution of our College in its first "Twenty-five years" to the story of our times. The contribution of the Professors to the cause of University Reform; of the students first to their own community life and then to the fuller life, national and international of the community; and, finally, of the Council to the cause of University Government when, assailed by all the dogs of war, it fought the good fight for patriotism, loyalty, justice and academic freedom; these things were recorded as evidence of service done and as proof of a not unworthy tradition.
The contribution of those first years stands, of course, to the credit of the fifty, but the retrospect has widened, the world has changed, all our institutions have had to face new tests. If we have indeed survived the tests, how have we borne ourselves in the fight, have we surrendered at vital points, and for what?
But first let us look at the casualties. Of the first four professors, one alone survives, and he cannot be with us. With Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, John Rankine Brown and Hugh Mackenzie, Sir Thomas Easterfield shared all the privations with all the honour of the pioneers and to him we give thanks and greeting. Of the first students certainly there are some few amongst us, mostly septuagenarians, who will take their part in the celebrations. Of those who voted in the momentous division in the House of Representatives—the story is told by Sir Robert Stout in the Silver Jubilee number—not one survives; and of the original council, all are gone. Sir Robert Stout has passed, the oldest and the greatest of the pioneers of Victoria College, and his passing marked the end of an epoch in the history of the University itself. We salute all who fought so well—not always with success—in the battles of fifty years ago and we give them thanks.
In passing from one age to another it is not merely time which counts. It is difficult to imagine a period more fraught with difficulty than that through which we have just passed. Oxford and Cambridge seem to have had centuries of fairly even development, centuries during which there was general agreement as to the cultural basis of education and as to educational methods—with a command of great scholars adequate to the tutorial and professorial needs. Victoria University College has grown up in an atmosphere of change. Throughout its fifty years it has been struggling to reform an antiquated system, it has been crippled by an effete examination tradition and a Senate dependent for progress on some measure of agreement between four Colleges whose interests were too often conflicting. Two world wars have disorganized teaching and staff and, despite the efforts of authority, have tended to lower standards. The wars and their aftermaths left the College struggling with a plethora of students, with inadequate staffs, with inadequate accommodation and with inadequate finance. In
On the other hand there are some more promising trends. The number of full-time students has been increasing, day-time lectures are more numerous and, in response to social needs, there is a much greater recognition of the place of research in a self-respecting University.
In attempting to assess the value of an institution to its time and place there is a tendency to measure it by specific incidents and specific doctrines. This is clearly not the best method of approach. If the institution is a University, it has to be recognized first that it is an integral part of a well-ordered community, because the progress of such a community depends upon knowledge, upon an objective search for truth, and experience has shown that such a search can be prosecuted only in an atmosphere of freedom. Where such an institution exists, its influences is not to be found in the hearts and minds of the people, its value is not to be expressed in terms of gold—nor fine gold—it is of the kind" hands cannot close upon." Fundamental research itself may give practical results, but its true value is above rubies, and is still impalpable. All knowledge, however, must be imparted in human tones by human beings and the story can best be gathered from the sound knowledge, the high ideals and character, the generosity and courage of men and women.
Victoria University College has made its mark upon our community because from the beginning and throughout its history it has not at any time lacked men of outstanding ability and character, men devoted to public good, willing to devote their ability and character to the public service. The first four Professors laid the foundations; and the names of T. H. Laby, D. K. Picken, G. W. von Zedlitz and Sir Thomas Hunter, who led the University Reform Movement, bear witness to the part played by our College in University leadership, as in many other departments of our social life.
It would be invidious to select from among the many who have served her the names of those who, like Harry Borrer Kirk, have been most loved, or of those who, like "Old Von," have brought to her service the most brilliant parts. It is not invidious, however, to mention some few who have attained international stature and reputation: Professor T. H. Laby, F.R.S. (in Physics), Professor C. A. Cotton (in Geology), Sir John Salmond (in Law)—men whose very names would bring distinction to any professoriate in the world; while Sir Carl Berendsen, our Ambassador in Washington, has maintained a high reputation before the United Nations. Among those who are serving or have served on the Supreme Court Bench, the names of the Rt. Hon. Sir Humphrey O'Leary, P.C., C.J., the Hons. Sir Archibald Blair, Sir Hubert Ostler, Sir David Smith, Sir Robert Kennedy are recorded on our roll of students, as is that of Sir Theodore Rigg, who four times won the University three miles and was knighted for his services to Agriculture. In the University itself Sir David Smith has become one of its most
With all the handicaps under which we have laboured we have, through the years, accumulated a not-unworthy record. A number, even of our earlier part-time men, have become distinguished lawyers, magistrates and judges, while from very early days the scientific departments have continued to produce men, who, when they have gone abroad, have taken an honourable place in the great world of science outside. In the humanities it is not so easy to gauge the standards. Beginning so often with ill-prepared matriculants, we may assume that our average entrance standard is not high, and it is all the more meritorious that our best students, who go abroad, have done so well. Of some we have every reason to be proud. We cannot expect that every year Canterbury will produce a Rutherford, or Victoria a Syme, a Robertson, a Jenness, or a MacDougall. The great and abiding contribution of a University, however, is the spirit and the inspiration which has made the achievement of the greater ones possible. If in the hearts and minds of the average student there has been implanted a love of truth for its own sake, a patient industry in the search for fact, a determination to understand and to follow wherever truth leads, the community will harvest a fitting and generous reward.
In the Silver Jubilee Number there was printed some "Stray Reflections" by John William Joynt, the Registrar of the New Zealand University when Victoria was young. In his day his was a name to conjure with and his interest in the new College was unbounded. "And what," he said, "of that first batch of students? . . . The faces and voices of many of them rise before me, across the distance of space and time . . . Few though they were, they have their place in academic history. They laid the foundations on which great things were to be erected . . . College patriotism and College fraternity sprang into existence as if by enchantment ..." Those who remember the Victoria of those days know how difficult it is to reproduce with 2,000 students the solidarity and enthusiasm which is so natural to 200, 200 working and playing against every possible handicap. It is only through the organisation of such numbers into different units—such as Weir House and the other Hostels—that the community life of fifty years ago can be recaptured, with its solidarity, its intensity and its sweetness. Today, the majority of students know nothing of our verses or our songs. Our "Sports Chorus" is almost forgotten, with "Absent Friends" and "The Final Chorus" and even The Old Clay Patch is less than a name. Nevertheless, the work of the College still pursues its quiet humanizing way.
The quiet, of course, as is the case wherever young men and women are gathered together in one place, is sometimes disturbed. Such is the nature of the young. After World War I, some students at the ancient University of Oxford passed a famous resolution indicating that they would never again fight for their country. Even then the newspapers and the megaphones found such exuberances good "copy." Even some greybeards of the period took such enthusiasm seriously, forgetting that it is better for immaturity to let off the steam of thought—even misguided thought—rather than not to think at all. It is well for intelligent people to remember that freedom itself must be bought at a price and that price often entails bearing-up in the face of the uninformed and the doctrinaire enthusiasms of the very young, as well as the conservative maunderings of the very old. What is more important and far more insidious is the inevitable entry into the stream of university thought of the pessimism, the disillusion and the vulgarity of modern life. Instead of the youth and vigour of the first Old Clay Patch we tend to achieve the lucubrations of a few stage-haunted exhibitionists who have no scruple in exploiting the lower instincts of the mob. It is always the excesses of an ignorant and stupid few which tend to undermine the great name a University bears and the great influence such a name should inspire. The excesses of generous human ideals may well be condoned, the excesses of low conduct can only be deplored.
The University claims for itself a freedom of expression and a freedom of government in a State which, as far as New Zealand is concerned, has provided the funds by which it exists. Such a state of affairs has implications. It implies the devotion of its members to its own ideals and, in the deepest sense, it implies the duty of consecration by its members to the highest good of the community. It is not without significance that, towards the end of its fifty years, in honour of Sir Thomas Hunter, the College published a volume of essays, and the volume was called The University and the Community. It is for service to the community that the right of freedom exists and by such service that its success can best be measured. The University holds "in trust" but its service may be greatest where it is least recognized.
Among the verses of our College which have fallen into oblivion are those by Seaforth Mackenzie in the Ode on the Laying of the Foundation Stone. It expressed some of the hopes and aspirations of those who were present on that day of days when the animosities of "The Battle of the Sites" were laid to rest:
As we pass this milestone we realize that we have travelled a long way since the Ode was written. One decade after another has passed back the torch and we may well and sincerely believe that the trust has not been betrayed. We have, without doubt, suffered from that "economic drive" which turns men from the pursuit of wisdom to the pursuit of a career, but the truth will never be without a witness so long as we remain true to the tradition of our first fifty years, ready to fight for decency and honour, to dedicate our lives and, in the last resort, to lay down our lives in the cause of freedom, truth and justice.
Dixon, James Yeomans
(escort to British children evacuated to Australia)
"
Your old men shall dream dreams (of the past?)
And your young men shall see visions" (of the future?)"
Where there is no vision the people perish."
Though an old man who is well past the dreaded age of three score years and ten, and, alas, the only survivor of the four foundation professors who came out from Great Britain in Evening Post has kindly provided typed copies (1) of the Post report on the meeting held on
Should this statement of recollection appear egotistical, I claim indulgence for recording personal experiences in a personal manner. It is often difficult to suppress the use of the first person singular in a personal narrative.
At the beginning of
In due course, candidates who had got as far as the short list were called to the Agent General's Office to be interviewed by a committee of some half-dozen educational experts, one of whom, a Cambridge don, was known to me personally. One question remains in my mind. It was asked by one of the committee who was certainly not a scientist: "Is there a good chemical laboratory in Cambridge? "The reply" Yes! the one in which I have the honour to demonstrate cost £40,000." The committee chuckled, and became in a very happy frame of mind. They seemed pleased that I asked the High Commissioner about the finance of Victoria College. The information supplied, like the finance, was decidedly meagre.
In the middle of
John Rankine Brown, Hugh Mackenzie and T. H. Easterfield sailed from Plymouth on the evening of Kaikoura in London. The Brown and Easterfield families were taken out by tender, and were in a bedraggled and collapsed condition when they reached the ship in Plymouth Sound. When the Kaikoura put out to sea things were even worse, for she drove into a first class gale which lasted three days and destroyed a large part of the captain's bridge. However, things had become quiescent and pleasant by the time we reached Teneriffe, and before we arrived at the Cape the three professors had learned something of one another's idiosyncrasies.
Rankine Brown and Mackenzie made it clear that they regarded their subjects as on a far higher plane educationally than mathematics or science. Easterfield considered that culture could be derived from almost any subject if it were sufficiently well taught. He suggested that ideals for the new College should be discussed forthwith, whereas they considered that it would be wisest to copy such colleges as were already established in New Zealand. He also said that as the professors were carefully selected because of their wide experience of English, Scottish and Continental universities, the Victoria College Council would expect them to be leaders in the community and implant a definite and independent Victoria College spirit. Such an independent spirit has on many occasions been shown by the College Council, the Professorial Board, and the University College students. That there have been extremists amongst them is in accord with the history of universities from time immemorial. Does not Cicero's Universitas signify a whole that is a Universe, and are we not to expect that in a Universe of thought new ideas will constantly emerge so that these will be a mixture of the conservative and the extremely new? Without such a mixture, residence in the university will be a poor training for postgraduate life.
The Kaikoura arrived in Wellington in the late afternoon of Saturday,
Mr Powles kindly shepherded us to a hotel on the site of the present Midland, and on the following day callers arrived; the first of them was Lady Stout. They did all in their power to make us feel that we were not strangers in a strange land.
On April 12th, a very large and enthusiastic meeting was held in the Education Board's building to celebrate the opening of the College and to welcome the foundation professors. The Chair was taken by the Mayor, Mr J. R. Blair, as chief citizen. He was also Chairman of the Victoria University College Council and of the boys' and girls' colleges. There were also present the Minister of Education, the Hon. W. C. Walker, M.A.; the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, Sir James Hector, M.D., F.R.S.; the Registrar of the University, J. W. Joynt; the Bishop of Wellington, Dr Wallis; Archbishop Redwood; Ministers of at least four other religious denominations; members of Parliament and of the Legislative Council; Mr J. P. Firth, Principal of Wellington College and members of his staff. The report of this meeting is well worthy of study at the present day.
Sir James Hector remarked that this might be regarded as the end of the thirty years' war, for the proposal for a University College in Wellington could be traced back to
In the week following the public welcome to the professors each delivered an inaugural lecture. As Sir Robert Stout's bound copy of these lectures can be consulted in the Victoria University College Library only a short reference can be made to them. J. Rankine Brown produced an excellent case for the study of Latin and Greek, particularly Latin, as subjects calculated to lead to accuracy of expression in speech and writing and to prevent slipshod phraseology.
Mackenzie was equally emphatic on the study of classical forms as the basis of literary training. Unfortunately, to many the address was hard to follow owing to his strong Scottish accent. Maclaurin was most interesting in dealing with Mathematics, surprising many by the statement that it was now accepted that Euclid's axioms were no longer necessary for geometry except as near approximations to the truth. Next he spoke of wireless telegraphy, explaining that wireless waves were predicted on purely theoretical grounds by the great Cambridge mathmetician, J. Clerk Maxwell, who translated Faraday's brilliant experimental work into mathematical language, and indicated how the wireless waves should be capable of detection; but Maxwell failed in the actual experiment. Hertz, Professor of Mathematics and later of Physics at Karlsruhe after a long series of experiments succeeded in finding a ready means of producing and detecting the waves, and the properties of the waves were exactly as predicted by Maxwell; later the discoveries were put on a commercial basis by Marconi.
Maclaurin then proceeded to show that many biological studies derived from the theory of Evolution were capable of mathematical treatment. The lecture was a masterly popular treatment of a most difficult subject.
Easterfield's lecture was entitled "Research as the prime factor in a Scientific Education." The lecture was delivered without reference to notes and contains several howlers. The main points may be stated in this way (1) That it is equally the duty of a scientific teacher to make new knowledge as to teach that which is already known, (2) That every science student should be regarded as potentially a research student if given the opportunity and encouragement, (3) That research is a great educator in itself, (4) That research habits carried into practice are of fundamental value to the human race. The lecture was well received but next morning I was told that it ough not to have been delivered as it might cause offence in other colleges. It was therefore of no little satisfaction to find that the Evening Post gave a leader headed "A laboratory for Wellington"; also a very appreciative critique of the lecture.
Two days later the Council of the Pharmaceutical Association came as a deputation to ask for help in improving the education of young pharmacists. This was followed by a visit from a man who asked me to assist him in a research on making gold from sawdust in which he claimed to have been very successful already.
It has already been stated that the Mount Cook site had been suggested as the best for a University College but in a few days news came that the ministerial residence in Tinakori Road had been offered. Mr Blair, the Chairman of the Council, asked me to go and see it as he was doubtful of the advisability of taking a building which would so quickly become outgrown. I reported against it for I knew that a chemical laboratory in the building would be an intolerable nuisance to my colleagues. It had been stated by the Agent General that the number of students was not likely to exceed fifty for several years. Actually 115 took lectures in the first year and there is no doubt that the number would have been far greater if they could have been brought together in a convenient building.
The next suggestion was that Victoria University College should have the use of the Girls' College after the girls left the building and on Saturday mornings, and two good rooms for chemistry and physics were lent by the Education Board in Victoria Street at least a mile away from the Girls' College. Neither gas nor water were laid on and there was no drainage. Also there was no money available for construction of laboratory benches and furniture. So boards on trestles had to be used and heating had to be done by spirit lamps. The goods ordered in England had not arrived, but Mr G. W. Wilton had a sufficient stock for me to supply immediate needs for chemistry. When asked to submit his account, it came already receipted, and, when asked to explain, he said it was the least he could do after the courteous reception given to the pharmaceutical association. For practical physics a sextant and a theodolite were borrowed and there was much home-made apparatus. I do not think it was ever known to the College Council that I called on the Minister of Education and had a heart to heart talk about
Various suggestions were made as to where the permanent home of Victoria University College should be. So far as I can remember it was seriously proposed by Mr Seddon that it should be placed on Wellington College cricket ground. Kelburn Park, at that time a barren waste, was then suggested and the proposal found much support. Finally the present site was agreed to.
When it was decided to build on Salamanca Road, all members of the Professorial Board, which by this time had grown very considerably, were asked to state what their requirements would be. A prize of £100 was to be given for the best design for the building for which, I think, £20,000 had been promised (subsequently increased to £30,000 to provide a third storey) and the condi-tions were duly published. Three architects proposing to compete approached Mr C. P. Powles and asked him to explain an apparent inconsistency in the conditions and he referred the competitors to me. I furnished each with a ground plan showing my ideas and insisted that the science buildings must occupy a separate block with physics and metallurgy on the ground floor, chemistry on the second floor, and biology above and indicated the very special provision which must be made in order that the chemical department should not become a nuisance. The report of the adjudicator, who was the government architect in Melbourne, was illuminating. It was to the effect that three of the plans were remarkably alike and were the only ones which could be considered. In particular, the science block left nothing to be desired. However, only one of the designs could be built for the sum provided and therefore it must receive the prize. He would have awarded it to the most expensive but for the limit placed upon the expenditure.
On the occasion of the opening of the College by the Governor General in
Probably it was in
Why did I leave Victoria College which I loved so deeply and the members of the Professorial Board for whom I had such a high regard, never having had a serious difference with any one of them? I had the feeling that my period of usefulness at Victoria was coming to an end and that a younger man was required for the work. There was also a sensation of war weariness and frustration. I had for some time been concerned with the need for more intense agricultural research work in New Zealand and had twice, at the request of Sir James Wilson, President of the Board of Agriculture, addressed the Annual Meeting of the New Zealand Farmers' Union on this subject. There was a humorous sequel to the address to the Farmers' Union in Post and would appreciate a few notes which he could make use of at the forthcoming Victoria University College capping ceremony at which he had been asked to speak. The notes were at once supplied and appeared practically verbatim in the speech. The Post commented on His Excellency's perspicacity in putting his finger on such an important need
Discussion had for some time taken place as to whether Wellington would be a suitable place for the establishment of a Chair of Agriculture so that science students might qualify for positions as teachers of Agriculture. The discussion ceased for the time being when a highly placed officer in the Education Department stated that "teachers of agriculture had no need for high falutin science." The Buchanan endowment for a Chair of Agriculture was not given till some years later.
In
In
May the alumni ever remain true to the excellent motto of Victoria University College—Sapientia auro magis desideranda. Still stands the ancient proverb "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom and with all they getting get understanding."
Since going to press we have learned with deep regret, of the death of Sir Thomas Easterfield.
"Long is the way Of the Seven Stages, slow the going, And few, indeed, as faithful to the end."
adapted from Auden
For people who write diaries, especially diaries kept in a locked drawer, with instructions to their executors not to publish for 50 years, it must be one of the pleasures of life to say exactly what one thinks about other people. Many such diaries have been published, and there are some that still make excellent reading—but what wry faces the diarists would have made, if asked to broadcast their impressions on the spot! The personal characteristics and histories of the men and women, teachers, administrators, and students of Victoria College in the early days are in many cases full of interest; in safe privacy, things could be told that must be suppressed today; and there is time to mention only very few out of many names.
To start with, the foundation professors; men of sharply differentiated types (and the wives of the married ones even more so), all remarkable men in different ways. The three married ones, two with families, made the long voyage in the same ship; one of them, Mackenzie, nearly missing the boat, so that all had to be hoisted on board in slings, somewhere in sight of the Needles. There was time for all of them to appraise each other's peculiarities, and the men learned to co-operate harmoniously without treading on each other's toes. The fourth, Maclaurin, a bachelor then, preferred to pay for his own passage by a quicker route. Maclaurin was indeed a remarkable man. He had been brought to New Zealand at the age of seven, and until he went to Cambridge received his education at Auckland. So he may be called a New Zealander, and a good one at that; he had a very brilliant academic career here and in England, was legitimately ambitious, highly regarded by the pundits of the world of universities for his personal charm as well as his intellect, with everything to tempt him to go on climbing the ladder on which he had so firm a footing. But, a quixotic streak in his make-up, a patriotic feeling that New Zealand had done something to help him and he must repay, induced him to accept an obscure, poorly paid, laborious post to help with the foundation of the fourth university college in New Zealand, in a commercial town profoundly indifferent to higher education. Oh that all our exported talent behaved in the same way!—still, one should be glad that at least some do. Maclaurin never intended to stay long. He told me once that a man must make the trip to England at least every other year if he did not want to be out-of-sight-out-of-mind with the dispensers of promotion. For he was worldly-wise too; he quite understood the necessity of belonging to the best clubs; he took office as a Freemason; if he had stayed long enough, he might have steered College and University into the sort of social recognition that impresses the groundlings and attracts benefactions from the rich. With no help in that direction from his colleagues, he could only look after himself. And in one way he was a typical New Zealander—he thought it important to have letters after one's name: thus he achieved the astounding feat of qualifying simultaneously as a wrangler and as a barrister, without any intention of ever practising law. Alas that in America overwork and over-conscientiousness should have ended his life-work so soon. He was a loyal friend, a sound and very frank adviser to me, and withal a man brilliantly witty and wonderful raconteur. The funny stories he told me about the great ones of the day, political, social, and academic, could never be broadcast. When reading the Streets of our City I often felt that it must have hurt my friend, the late Miss Irvine Smith—herself an outstanding personality of the early college days—to find out so many amusing things about people after whom Wellington streets are named, and not be able to tell . . .
Of the three married professors, Mackenzie was the senior in years. A man devoid of selfish ambitions, with a lovable simplicity of conscientious devotion to a modest if exacting routine of duty; without any offensiveness of over-zeal such as I myself showed now and then. A generous and trustworthy man, of the type that, according to the old fable, constitute the salt of the earth. It is not generally known that, in spite of his being one of the youngest of the numerous brothers of the powerful Minister of Lands, he very nearly missed the appointment from an evenly divided College Council. His rival competitor was Lafcadio Hearn, who was then anxious to return to a European community from his voluntary exile in Japan.
The great deserts of John Brown, the Low-lander, were of a different order to those of Mackenzie or Maclaurin. His was a puzzling character on which psycho-analytic treatment might have thrown light, combining as it did apparently irreconcilable characteristics. No man could have been kinder to his students, more generously eager to win their affection and to promote their interests. Well do I remember my first conversation with him: "Your evening meal will have to be before five or after nine, as those
are our only hours for teaching at present"—"I hope you won't consider my convenience in the matter."—But my voice must have shown the surprise I felt, for he answered with some asperity—"Your convenience has nothing to do with it at all. The only thing we consider is the interests of the students." A couple of months later, when we were working together on a Latin College song, we differed about the words "obsequens servitium" to describe the student body; I protested that they might legitimately object to the possible implications; Brown defended the words as from an Olympian height. When one remembers that in those days Latin was compulsory in the Arts and Law courses, one does not wonder that generations of his pupils repaid his devoted care of their interests by an unbounded loyalty of gratitude. I can't do better than quote from an account by one of them given in Sir Thomas Hunter's monograph on John Brown:
"The feeling of Brown's students for him was related not only to his consideration and helpfulness but also to his extreme conscientiousness. I doubt whether in the whole of his 46 years he ever scamped the marking of his proses and unseens—and temptation must have sometimes been very strong; I remember too how often he insisted on coming to College when be was off-colour and should have been in bed. Even very immature students have a queer way of knowing whether or not a man is honestly doing his job—and in Brown's case there was never any doubt about the point."
Brown had his reward not only in the love of his pupils; all his legitimate ambitions were gratified, though not all as quickly as he hoped. Throughout he clung to a sort of unofficial primacy on the Staff; he attained to high honours in the administration of the University; he was granted the doctorate honoris causi of his own University of St Andrew's; and to the satisfaction of friends and opponents alike received his knighthood, but at the close of his long life, with only a few months to enjoy the coveted honour bestowed many years before on some of his junior colleagues. But at last he did receive it, and surely no university teacher better deserved it.
Now what can be said of Easterfield, who may be listening in? Much could be said of how he, while the rest of us were looking for outside aid, single-handed, by his own energy, laid the foundations of scientific training for his students. I like best to think of him as an Englishman and a Yorkshire man at that; a typical Englishman, the only one for years on the Victoria College Staff. To me, whose early environment was English and whose grandfather came from Leeds, the word English brings warmth of emotion still.
And I cannot omit the name of H. B. Kirk, appointed next after me in
There were interesting personalities too among the early lecturers. J. W. Joynt for instance. A courteous and learned Irishman, a classical scholar, well-read in philosophy and in German literature. When Victoria College started, the Governor of the day—or perhaps his wife—had the bright idea of varying the ordinary routine of Government House balls and receptions by having a series of highbrow lectures through the winter. The new College would provide the lecturers. In Wellington's social world one did not refuse Government House invitations, even to hear a lecture, Joynt gave the first lecture—also the last—to our social elite. His subject was Goethe's Faust, about which his information and his enthusiasm were so great that the hour for refreshments went by unheeded, and much more. Then there was Maurice Richmond, the thoughtful, erudite philosophic lawyer, and David Ritchie, drawn from an altogether different environment. He came here for reasons of health, bringing capital for the purchase of a sheep farm. With Scottish prudence—he was heir presumptive to a great Scottish estate—he decided to investigate and learn before buying. Meanwhile, to occupy his days, he lectured at Victoria College and acted as assistant—for a short time—in the General Assembly Library. Here, while in charge of the Reading Room, he found a stertorously breathing drunk, sleeping it off on one of the Library sofas, shook him up and firmly escorted him off the premises. Such high-handed independence could not be tolerated—then—in a mere temporary civil servant. He was an Oxford graduate, a cultured gentleman with a countryman's tastes—a good golfer, a hundred break billiard player, an excellent fisherman and horseman, and became a successful farmer. Many pleasant memories his name brings back to me.
If time permitted, a long list might be given of interesting personalities among the early students. An old photograph in Miss Irvine Smith's book shows a casual college group in which are represented a surprising number of people who have distinguished themselves in various ways, paying us all amply for the cost, so sparingly doled out, of their higher education. There was George Dixon, whose organizing genius won success and smooth running for every corporate undertaking, who did nearly all the hard work, and simply
(Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages)
The past half-century, from the foundation of Victoria College to the present day, has seen a remarkable period of scientific development, which has been stimulated rather than retarded by two world wars. This has duly influenced the growth of the different scientific departments, whose needs in equipment and staff have increasingly expanded. The functions of a university in the teaching of science are various: in the first place it is necessary to provide a general initial knowledge of science, and a training in scientific method, for those preparing for such professional courses as medicine, dentistry, agriculture, and engineering; again a more extensive training is required for those who wish to become scientists by profession, physicists, chemists, botanists, zoologists and geologists; then finally facilities must be given for research by those who have the special temperament, ability, and enthusiasm, for this type of work. The reproach may be made that university teaching in science is too theoretical and academic, but it is found for the most part that a well-trained university student will quickly adapt himself to deal with technical and industrial problems.
A brief account will now be given of the growth and development of the different scientific departments of Victoria College. Geology began under the lectureship of Dr. C. A. Cotton, who is now professor in this subject and head of the department, which has in recent times considerably expanded. Always cramped for space, having at first a basement in the Physics wing, the Geology department now finds inadequate accommodation in the hutments on Kelburn Park. A new building to the south of the Biology Block is projected for Chemistry and Geology, and has priority in the developmental schemes of the College. Professor Cotton is a distinguished geologist with a European reputation, and well-known in America, where recently he was invited by one of its universities to be guest-lecturer. The environment of Wellington is not especially rich geologically, but it shows exciting possibilities from the point of view of structure, as indicated for example by the raised beaches on our coasts. Professor Cotton's studies on these and kindred matters are contained in his book, "The Geomorphology of New Zealand." The themes developed there are extended in his later works, namely "Landscapes," and "Climatic Accidents in Landscape-making," and the further title "Volcanoes as Landscape Forms" is of especial interest to us in this country. Students of Professor Cotton have extended this type of investigation, not only in New Zealand, but also in other countries, and among them may be mentioned Professor L. C. King, at present in South Africa, and Professor I. H. Sticht, who is in California.
Biology at Victoria College will always be associated with the name of the late Professor H. B. Kirk, whose friendly personality is remembered by many generations of students. Beginning in the early stages of our history in a borrowed class-room of a Wellington school, this department later occupied the top floor of the Chemistry Wing of Victoria College. The dream of Professor Kirk was realised with the construction of the Biology Block, which is immediately to the south of the main College building. At about this same time, Biology was separated into two departments, Professor L. R. Richardson being the present professor of Zoology, and Professor H. D. Gordon the head of the Botany Department, the combined staffs now numbering eleven. The botanists and geologists trained at Victoria College are in many ways active in the community; some have remained in academic posts or proceeded to museums, whilst others have become attached to important research institutions, that explore the application of scientific knowledge to economic problems, such as the Cawthron Institute, the Plant Diseases Division, the Soils Survey, and the Grasslands Division. At the same time pure research has not been neglected, and a wide range of subjects is now under active study, including such varied topics as the microscopic animals of fresh waters, the blood parasites of mammals, corals and seaurchins. One of the schemes projected by Professor Kirk was the establishment of a Marine Station to be under the control of Victoria College;
The Physics department was founded by Professor T. H. Laby in
Professor T. H. Easterfield, one of our foundation professors, was the first head of the chemistry department, which began with a single laboratory in the old Technical School. When Victoria College was built the chemistry department occupied the first floor of the Chemistry wing, and on the construction of the Physics building then expanded to include the ground floor also. That accommodation has remained unchanged in spite of the large increases in the number of chemistry students and also of the staff, and the space now available is quite inadequate for teaching and research. A new chemistry building has been designed and is a priority in the College building plans. On the appointment of Professor Easterfield, in
The preceding brief review reveals that Victoria College in the last fifty years has duly fulfilled its obligations to the community in providing for the teaching of science and the encouragement of research. In my own science, chemistry, my association with the College covers most of this period, first as a student, then after a period of sixteen years abroad, as a teacher. In those early days there was a single course of lectures in the subject, and the text-books available were not of great merit; now students receive lectures over four years, and there are text-books of outstanding merit in every branch of the subject. The progress of chemistry in this time has been truly remarkable; looking back I can report that chemistry fifty years ago was a fairly simple department of human knowledge, about which a single individual without undue arrogance might claim an adequate comprehension, whilst now the subject has become so complex and highly specialized that accurate knowledge must be restricted to special fields. The possibilities of development in even such a
Once in fifty years is not too often for a university college to ask the community to reflect upon its achievements and its hopes. University teachers are notoriously loath to explain what they are doing; perhaps therefore it is not surprising that there are still people who look upon the College as a secluded spot where somewhat absent-minded people teach and meditate far from the bewildering movements of everyday life. The truth of the matter is, of course, that everything that is studied within the college has come into the curriculum from the past or present community; the classics and modern languages, science, mathematics, the social studies and the rest, all arose from the day-to-day activities of men. It is equally true that every advance in knowledge that is made within the university is sooner or later reflected in the community outside. There is thus a constant interchange between the college and the community; whether we are all aware of it or not is beside the point.
The most obvious interchange between Victoria College and the community is the daily shuttle relay of students, as anyone who cares to stroll along Salamanca Road any afternoon between four and six will realise. And the most obvious employment within those red-brick walls is teaching. Life is short, and every new life begins at the beginning; we must provide and maintain places of learning where communication from older to younger minds can take place. The nature of this communication is not the passing on of a body of knowledge as a banker passes on minted coins to his client. Facts are important, but their chief importance is that they provide the student with the raw materials of thought. Knowledge is a dead thing unless something new is continually born of knowledge. The function of the college is therefore the teaching of what Graham Wallas called the art of thought, an art that can best be maintained, as Rashdall has said, by bringing together, "face to face in living intercourse, teacher and teacher, teacher and student, student and student." It is the hope of the university teacher that the student will leave college at the end of his course knowing where to find his facts, at home in the world of ideas, and capable of courageous and selfless thinking of his own. The university therefore, is the home of methods and techniques of thought in the subjects it sets out to teach.
It must not be imagined, however, that in all studies the techniques of thought and research are equally well developed. The student of languages may be sure that the grammar of his subject is not likely to be shaken, though changes in emphasis are continually occurring. Again, the elements of mathematics have long been worked out, and, while there is abundant research in new fields, the beginner may be sure that he is on firm ground among the elements of geometry, algebra and the calculus. The young chemist approaches his subject knowing that it is a far cry from the days of the alchemists and that here at any rate he can depend upon the well-based principles of scientific method. In the social sciences, on the other hand, the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment and verification does not apply at all points. The physical scientists have the advantage that the material with which they are working is relatively stable. The atom, for instance, is an elusive customer, but its inner secrets are revealed at the point of scientific method made so admirably effective through the system of team work that scientists have achieved. In the social sciences the conditions are very different. The material to be explored is nothing less than mankind; not man-alone, but man in relation to man; in other words, "what man has made of man." Social science calls upon many well-established subjects, history, geography, anthropology, psychology and the like. The growing point of social science at the moment lies in an evaluation of the social scene. Here the method of experiment is obviously impossible but it is possible to devise methods of surveying the situation with scientific accuracy. This calls for a colossal amount of team work which is still far from achievement.
The fact is that the scientific method, which, since the days of Galileo, has been increasingly applied, has given us our modern world, the nature of which is too obvious to call for any description. Yet it is a world full of social contraditions. It is impossible to try to sum up the malaise of the
the people is the scientific attitude of mind." Partial, unscientific theories based merely on local, economic or racial considerations must be replaced by more complete and more scientific thought in the service of human decency and freedom. Much may yet be achieved in this direction at the world level by Unesco, but we cannot hope for a real understanding unless there is teaching and research at the local level. It is here that the university has its part to play.
In the work of applying the principles of scientific thinking to the problems of the life of the community, Victoria College has been a pioneer in this country. In
In
Since
The social studies demand work in and for the community beyond the walls of the College. It is impossible for anyone working in this field to confine his thinking to the study, or his teaching to the lecture room. One cannot enumerate all the ways in which teachers of the social sciences are linked with the community; it must be said, however, that Sir Thomas Hunter and his colleague however, that Sir Thomas Hunter and his colleagues have been responsible for the setting up of a Child Guidance Clinic at the College and also for the establishment of research in Industrial Psychology in conjunction with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The Professor of Education has always been in close touch with the Department of Education, the Teachers' Training College and the schools; local bodies and the Public Service generally are in frequent collaboration with the college department of Political Science.
In the realm of historical research the College has widened its horizon by the recent appointment of Dr J. C. Beaglehole as Research Fellow in Pacific History. His work will entail much field work in the Pacific area; it is good to know that the compilation of his researches will link the College with the work of history in the making.
The College has always been aware of its responsibility in the matter of voluntary adult education. When Dr Albert Mansbridge founded the W.E.A. his aim was to provide a link between the universities and the workers. The movement came to New Zealand in
It is pleasing also to remember in this Jubilee year that the New Zealand Council for Educational
It will be seen from this brief resume that one development of the work of the College since Sir Thomas Hunter arrived nearly 45 years ago has been along the lines of the social studies, and it is to be hoped that the administration will pursue this course until it is able to say that the College is giving the fullest possible service to the community in this respect. Victoria is well placed for the work; situated in the centre of the country it has easy access to all parts of the Dominion. Within the College there is close collaboration between the various studies connected with the life of man in society. Yet the work has only just begun. The frontier lies now in the development of research in social science. The need is urgent. New Zealand has never been lacking in social experiments; the time has come to give to local conditions the close objective study of the social scientist. In this field, techniques suitable to New Zealand have to be worked out, and the principles have to be taught. A number of problems suggest themselves concerned chiefly with the effects of our housing policy, social security, medical care, the ageing population, the conditions of the rural life, the effect of the rising birth-rate. It is possible to apply to all these the principles of scientific method that have been so effective in increasing our knowledge of the physical world. And the place to apply them is in the laboratory atmosphere of the university.
The study of literature in our College is an academic study. Academic study means something more than study within the walls of a university. It implies a certain method and a certain attitude of mind. I use the word academic advisedly, and I use it even with a touch of pride. And yet this word academic is often used as a term of abuse rather than one of commendation. When the man-in-the-street thinks a question isn't worth the time spent on discussion, he says "What of it? It's a purely academic question." And this is true whether the street he is in at the moment is Fifth Avenue or the Rue de Rivoli or Charing Cross Road or just Macquarie Street or Lambton Quay. Academic to the ordinary man anywhere implies dullness plus a touch of abscurity.
The abuse comes from another quarter too. The bright boys of the monthly and the quarterly reviews hailing the latest and greatest piece of writing of the month or the quarter are unanimous in condemning what they call the academic critic. To them the academic study of literature is the study of books and more books and the deliberate avoidance of real life. Academic to the bright boys means dullness plus a touch of futility.
Since the term academic is so frequently a bludgeon with which to knock a man down, you may well be wondering by now why I am so cheerfully admitting that at Victoria College the study of literature is academic. Surely I should he hiding my head in some cloistered corner, sale from the man-in-the-street and the quarterly reviewer? Why be proud of being academic?
The academic study of literature depends on two things, scholarship and a sense of history. Let us spend a few minutes on each.
What is scholarship? It is the scientific and accurate study of a body of knowledge. The scholarly study of literature starts with a first hand knowledge of what the author wrote. What were the actual words he put on paper or on sheepskin? The unscholarly reader doesn't need to trouble himself about this problem. There is the book. There are the words. Surely he can read them without further ado? But the scholar must go one step further and establish accurately what he calls the text of his author . . . what the author wrote and not what some copyist or some printer or some later editor insisted he must have written. It is horrifying and it should be humbling to think that not all the lines we read in our school text of Shakespeare were written by Shakespeare. Some were written by eighteenth century editors who couldn't understand his Elizabethan English and insisted on touching it up here and there. The early prints of Shakespeare's plays have some queer misprints and errors, and it is one of the jobs of the scholar to get behind them and establish what Shakespeare really wrote.
Next there is the accurate study of literary biography. The amount of fantasy and fable that clings to the names of great writers has occupied a generation of scholarly study. Do you believe that Shakespeare got into trouble for stealing deer? Do you believe that Shakespeare got his first theatrical job holding the horses of the wealthier
The Quarterly? Do you believe that poets are rather effeminate people who have no head for business? Scholarship has dispelled all these fancies.
The scholarly study of literature includes the study of the writer's language, his education, his reading, the economic and social history of the times in which he wrote. Without these things we can make hideous mistakes. When Shakespeare makes Romeo say as he contemplates the body of Juliet,
O here will I set up my everlasting rest, most readers or listeners think that Romeo is announcing that he is going to his everlasting rest. After all, these are the words he uses. But rest in Elizabethan idiom meant a bet, and what Romeo is saying (to translate it into more modern terms) is that he is going to take his last plunge. Again, in an eighteenth century novel, the modern reader may be surprised when the heroine comes downstairs to an evening party in her nightgown. As he reads further he notes that none of the other characters in the scene is perturbed. Why should they be? The scholar can reassure the modern reader: night-gown is eighteenth century idiom for evening-dress, and the heroine was quite properly clad. Without accurate and informed study of the language and the life of earlier periods we run the risk of completely misunderstanding what on the face of it seems to be written in plain and understandable English.
This brings me to my second point. The academic study of literature depends on a sense of history. In this more than anything it differs from the non-academic approach. The scholar studies the development of literature from its origins. Our own literature has a certain organic growth and an overwhelming continuity. If you don't feel that continuity, you are liable to be taken in very badly. You hail as the last word something that has been said five times a century for a thousand years. Or worse still you miss the originality of something that is being really said for the first time.
The sense of history that pervades our study is one of our reasons for our dwelling so long on the earlier periods of literature. I am all for the study of contemporary literature and believe it has a proper place in university studies, but it should not bulk too largely. Merely to read our contemporaries is to miss the sense of history. We miss something else too. We miss one of the most valuable ways of checking whether our contemporaries are writing anything worth while. The historical study of literature throws light too on even the most recent writings in the language. I suppose the most outstanding two poets of this generation and the last are W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot. Eliot is as typical of the young men of the twenties as Auden is of the men of the thirties. You might say no two men were in their time so up-to-date. But if you read their poetry and know nothing of Anglo-Saxon, much of what Eliot and Auden have to say will remain unheard.
Scholarship is a tall order. During recent years we have had some five hundred students studying English at some stage. Do they all have to undergo the fairly lengthy and rigorous discipline of scholarly study? The answer is yes and no. At Victoria we make a clear distinction between the Stage I student who is going no further than one year's study and the student who advances his study of literature for two, three or four years to the final B.A. or M.A. level. The first year programme is self-contained, and contains three elements: a historical survey of English literature studied from actual texts and not from text-books; a training in criticism, with the emphasis on "What do I think of it?" rather than on "What should I think of it?"; and (within the limits imposed by time and staffing) a practical training in effective writing. Our ideal, and certainly our hope, is that a student who has been through the first year course, even though that is the finish of his academic study of literature, will have some sense of historical development, some sense of criticism, and will be able to express himself with grace and effect. Of course we don't always attain our ideal.
Beyond that point the discipline is more rigorous. Many things just darkly hinted at in the first year are seriously tackled by those students who advance in literature, the detailed history of special periods of literature, the historical study of language, textual criticism, the methods and technique of scholarship ... we are out on the open sea.
You will observe there is one gap in all this, one thing we do not do. We study literature, but we don't write it, at least not officially. Universities are sometimes criticised because they do not appear to encourage the actual writing of literature in their literature classes. In some American universities, there are classes in Creative Writing. I have still to be convinced that anyone can teach anyone else to be a poet or a novelist. The way to write a poem is to write a poem and not to take a class on The Writing of Poetry. I think we can honestly claim at Victoria that we haven't taught anyone to be a poet, but we have quietly encouraged and produced quite a few and I don't think we have ruined any potential good ones. One thing we can claim. Over the years, we have trained hundreds of men and women who can read with enjoyment and critical judgment. Unless there is a high standard of criticism in the community the poet and the novelist are voices crying in the wilderness.
I've talked of the things we do and can do, and of the things we don't do and don't think we can do. Even though this is Jubilee year, I'd rather close on a questioning note. What of the things we don't do but should be doing? The first of these is drama. I'd like to see a lot more plays produced at Victoria. Nothing brings literature so alive as producing it on the stage. I am frankly envious here of what the Canterbury players have done. They have outstripped all the other colleges. Perhaps we might persuade Ngaio Marsh to come to Victoria for a season. And what of publishing? Victoria has still to produce a literary magazine of solid merit. What about it, boys (and girls) from up the hill?
In wellington, law is in the air. This is the view of the late Miss Irvine-Smith, an outstanding personality of the early days of Victoria University College in her book The Streets of My City. Here, in Wellington, sits the Court of Appeal, the highest appellate tribunal in the Dominion; here, too, we have the Houses of Parliament and the various Departments of State, those manufactories of rules, orders and regulations that, of recent years, have descended upon us like the leaves of autumn. Is it any wonder, then, that its University College, Victoria, has made a special feature of its law studies, that "the College on the hill," during the fifty years of its history, has drawn from the well of the law much of the lifeblood of its existence!
In no small measure the prominence which its students have achieved in important spheres of our national life is due to the high standards set by its professors of law. The first of these, McLaurin, was a remarkable man. He qualified simultaneously as a barrister and a senior wrangler at Cambridge, where he shared rooms with the South African, Smuts. After lecturing at Victoria College in jurisprudence and mathematics, he was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics at Columbia University in the United States and later President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here, at the cost of his health, he raised so many millions for his Institute that it became one of the wealthiest of the endowed corporations in America—a striking contrast with Victoria which, in matters of endowment, has been the neglected Cinderella of the university colleges of this country.
After him came Maurice Richmond, remembered more as an erudite lawyer and a pensive philosopher than as a practical teacher. He was somewhat overshadowed in this respect by his successor J. W. Salmond who had lectured for several years at the Adelaide University before accepting the Chair of Law here. He combined the gifts of a brilliant scholar with those of an inspiring instructor and guide. In his early days, he had practised law at Temuka and Geraldine, but his heart was in the theory rather than in the practice of the law; and what was Temuka's loss and Geraldine's became the world's gain. As a jurist, Sir John Salmond holds today in the world of law a position no less exalted than that of Lord Rutherford in the world of science. His works on jurisprudence and torts reveal the clarity of mind and expression which made him so impressive a teacher, and they have long been leading textbooks throughout the British Empire and America. When he severed his connection with the College and entered the law Drafting Department, afterwards to become Solicitor-General and a member of the judiciary, his place was filled by James Adamson, a member of the Faculty of Advocates of Edinburgh. A very dry wit and an exceptional scholastic record always proclaimed the country of his origin. In the early days of law teaching, so many lecturers seemed to drift away to other fields of intellectual endeavour that it was suggested that the Government ought to impose a poll-tax on the exportation of local professors. No such precaution was necessary in the case of Adamson. He stayed 31 years, expounding the heavy intricacies of such subjects as Roman Law, Conflicts and International Law. His classes usually commenced at eight in the morning when the burr of his soft voice and his sepulchral tones did not always rouse to active and sustained attention the semi-somnolent whose candle had been burning brightly at both ends. His colleague, J. M. E. Garrovv, who lectured on the practical side also came from Scotland but he had practised in Dunedin and served for a time as Registrar at the Otago University. His methods were more prosaic. Countless students of the many subjects that the budding solicitor had to master will recall his Sunday evening suppers at which their desire to do justice to the ample fare he had provided was tempered by the fear that a shaking hand or a clumsy elbow might render them in his eyes unfitted to enter the profession of the law. He was
a lovable character whose approach to the students' problem was always one of simplicity and kindliness. His successor, Professor Cornish, was a former graduate and followed the path of Salmond through the office of Solicitor-General to the Supreme Court Bench. The present Dean of the Faculty is Professor James Williams, well-known both here and overseas for his writings upon the subject of Contracts. Save for a short interval at Sydney University, he has occupied the Chair of English and New Zealand law for fourteen years; and, for the last five of these, Professor R. O. McGechan, who formerly practised on the equity side of the New South Wales Bar, has lectured on those academic topics that were for so long the peculiar province of "Jimmy Adamson."
Now, if the law, as Dr Samuel Johnson observed, is 'the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public,' it is pertinent to enquire what advantages this Dominion has derived from the many who have studied it. The answer is to be found in the proud record of our public service—judicial, legislative and departmental. In the short time at our disposal for this talk, the passing parade cannot be sufficiently mirrored. Only a few names can be given, to illustrate, and not to complete, the record. Our present Chief Justice, Sir Humphrey O'Leary, is the first home-grown product of Victoria College to fill this, the highest office of the judiciary. A fine representative footballer, he collected all the forensic prizes with his cheery assurance, his wit and his Irish eloquence. The first College graduate actually to become a Supreme Court judge was H. H. Ostler, afterwards Sir Hubert Ostler, noted for his keen, rapier-like mind and his habit of sweeping aside mere technicalities in his passion to do justice. He was followed by A. W. Blair, first secretary of the Debating Society; D. S. Smith, now Chancellor of the New Zealand University; Arthur Fair, formerly Solicitor-General and King's Counsel; Robert Kennedy, knighted this year; H. H. Cornish; James Christie, C.M.G., formerly Law Draftsman; J. D. Hutchison one of the best Canterbury footballers of earlier days and a keen supporter of boxing. E. P. Hay, the latest addition to the Bench, was also a student of Victoria.
To the Courts of Compensation and Arbitration the College sent the late P. J. O'Regan, all his life a stalwart champion of the legal rights of the worker, and, more recently, D. J. Dalglish, an acknowledged expert in company and statute law. D. G. Morison, present Chief Judge of the Native Land Court, is a graduate in law as was his predecessor, F. O. Acheson, who died last year.
Amongst the Magistrates, there have been J. L. Stout, a foundation student of
In the delicate arena of diplomacy, Sir Carl Berendsen (who shares with the late Neville Chamberlain a love for the ubiquitous umbrella) is New Zealand Minister to the United States; Guy Powles is now Administrator of Western Samoa and J. S. Reid is First Secretary to the Legation at Washington.
Old friendships and rivalries of the College appear also on the Parliamentary scene. Amongst the sitting members, we have the Honourable H. G. R. Mason, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, M. H. Oram, C, G. Harker and W. A. Sheat. There have been F. W. Schramm, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Mason of Napier and T. H. Seddon, Chairman of the War Pensions Board. T. D. H. Hall until recently Clerk of the House, was a graduate; so is H. N. Dollimore, the present Clerk. Victoria College graduates who are today King's Counsel include P. B. Cooke, the President of the New Zealand Law Society; A. H. Johnstone of Auckland who has given signal service to the legal profession over a long period of years; H. E. Evans, now Solicitor-General and Chancellor of the Anglican Diocese of Wellington; and O. C. Mazengarb who is also a Doctor of Laws. So is N. A. Foden of the Crown Law Office and so was George Craig, C.M.G., who specialised in Customs Law and became Comptroller of Customs. A foundation student and a member of the first executive of the College, he represented the best type of public servant. His later years, unfortunately, were marred by the grimmest of tragedy. All three of his daughters were killed by the Japanese while being evacuated from Singapore, two (twins) had been doctors in charge of a hospital in Malaya, and the third who served under them as a nurse, on the outbreak of war, had graduated in
Over the fifty years, many brilliant legal students have played a worthy part in the social and intellectual development of the College. In
Returned servicemen have reason to admire the efforts on their behalf of Sir William Perry, a great imperialist and a Minister in the War Cabinet. In
Writing of legal practitioners in medieval times, Professor Maitland says, "These lawyers are worldly men, not men of sterile caste, they marry and found families, some of which become as noble as any in the land; but they are in their way learned, cultivated men, linguists, logicians, tenacious disputants, true lovers of the nice case and the moot point. They are gregarious, clubbable men . . . multiplying manuscripts, arguing, learning and teaching, the great mediators between life and logic, a reasoning reasonable element in the English nation." This is a warm picture of the place of the lawyers in the community. It has an application to a present-day New Zealand as well as to an England that is past. And fifty years of law at Victoria University College have helped to make it so.
It seems only yesterday that I was fortunate to witness the three miles New Zealand Championship held in Dunedin in
But the sporting history of Victoria College is not just the history of outstanding athletes—it is the history of the large participation in healthy recreation by those who have realised the value of such recreation in assisting to regenerate a tired brain—it is the history also of many lasting friendships which extend throughout the world.
It was only natural with the arrival in
Tennis was the first sport to gain official recog-nition at Victoria College, it being recorded that a tennis club was formed in
The first record of tennis being played by students of V.U.C. was in a match against Canterbury University College. Representing V.U.C. in that memorable match were Misses Greenfield and Ross, and Messrs Richmond, Burns and Wilson (who later became Professor F. P. Wilson), other earlier representatives being Rawdon Beere and Misses A. M. Batham and Van Staveren.
A date of historic interest to tennis at Victoria is
Associated with Victoria College tennis will always be the name of Cam Malfroy, who secured
Now, having given tennis just the barest mention, I move on to hockey. It is a great pleasure to students and ex-students to pay tribute to the gentleman to whom belongs the distinction of forming the Hockey Club, Mr George Dixon, who is still actively interested in the sport, and is today President of the Wellington Hockey Association.
Hockey has always been popular in Victoria College and, in
When talking of hockey at Victoria College the names which come most readily to mind are Eddie McLeod, Charlie Bollard and Norm. Jacobsen, the latter a player from whom the touring Indian hockey players said they had learned much about their own game. All these three players won New Zealand representation. Then, of course, the College was proud of the successes gained on the hockey field by Skelley, Ryburn, Rawdon Beere (Club captain for the first eight years), Monaghan, David Smith (now Sir David Smith, Chancellor of the University of New Zealand), Hector Lawry and Ivor Ting.
Next, Rugby football. What a lot of time I could devote to players who came from Victoria College to the Rugby field! I have already referred to George Aitken and Jackie Ruru. When I go back to the beginning of Rugby at the College I also meet with names famous in the world outside the College. In our first year the Committee included such men as Bogle, Gillanders, A. H. Johnstone, de la Mare, Hubert Ostler, Quartley and Tudhope.
New Zealand Rugby football history seems to date from The Spike I take this quotation—"In
Time will not permit me adequately to deal with the players from V.U.C. who have made their names in representative football, but some that I must mention are Bogle, who was a Scottish trial international in
I desire also to place on record the great interest and enthusiasm always displayed by Professor Boyd Wilson and the late Professor H. B. Kirk in the activities of our Rugby football club and its members.
Next to Rugby, perhaps track and field athletics have brought Victoria College sport most into the limelight. In recent years the College has not been very strong in this sport, but the history of track and field is one of outstanding success. Mr G. F. Dixon, already mentioned for his grand work in connection with hockey, was one of those responsible for the formation of our Athletic Club, thus ensuring the success of the athletic events at In addition to Mr Dixon, the club owed much to the help given by Professor Easterfield—himself a Cambridge Blue—de la Mare and Tom Seddon.
Victoria College athletes have won 37 New Zealand titles and three Australasian titles. Australasian title winners have been L. A. Tracy (440 yards)
In
With time marching on, I find that there are many sports I have not mentioned, such as Boxing, coupled with the name of Fred Desmond; Swimming—the name of Des Dowse comes to mind. Fencing, Basketball, Association Football, Cross Country Running with the name of H. E. Moore, New Zealand Champion in
With time almost up, I want to pay a special tribute to two men. There are, I know, others who have done a tremendous amount of work in assisting sport at the College, but I do feel that the College, and those who have represented the College in any sphere of sport, are indebted to these two gentlemen. First, Mr Geo. Dixon, who entered the College in
Some of the advertisers in this issue have been supporting Victoria College through thick and thin for a number of years. It would help them, and it would express your appreciation, if you were to buy from them. And when buying, please mention The Spike.
Prometheus, it is said, brought fire in a fennel stalk. There is always in legend something of prophecy, and our age is, in a way, Promethean, though this time it is man who has stolen fire from heaven. As Thornton Wilder showed in the story of Chrysis, the Andrian (a forerunner of the Magdalen), this legend with its tale of penance and vicarious renunciation seemed to foreshadow a greater sacrifice than Chiron's and a greater hope than remained in Pandora's box.
If a man were asked what was the effect of a University education upon his own individual self it would be impossible to answer; for it would assume an isolation of instruction; and no-one is isolated from his fellows, from his city, from his country, from his world. To eat in accordance with even the simplest standards, he is dependent on the efforts of earth and its creatures; the same is more true of his mental fare. Some answer may be found in the life he leads.
Ruskin held that "Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave." To some ears that may seem priggish, but a few more such prigs might have saved Europe. Dorothy Thompson, in its rubble to-day, sought what was lacking in those who caused its ruin. She found that it was not wits but, to use an old word, in-wit, conscience. When conscience goes only utility remains—a selfish mint without cosmic currency.
Jacques Maritain, discussing the rights of man, recently wrote that, in his opinion, to justify those rights we should re-discover the natural law. "We are then able to understand how a certain ideal, rooted in the nature of man and of human society, can impose moral demands valid throughout the world of experience, history, and fact, and can establish, for the conscience, as for the written law, the permanent principle and the elementary and universal criteria of rights and duties."United Nations Weekly Bulletin, Vol. III, No. 21,
In his address to Unesco on
Customs have influenced common law, but of the natural law Aquinas could say that it was a share of the external: "Lex naturalis nihil aliudest quam participatio legisæternæ in rationali creatura." Before Aquinas, Jeremiah had written: "Saith the Lord: I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts."
Dr Mortimer J. Adler of the University of Chicago has given it as his solution also. "More people in the world must start thinking about the natural law as opposed to the positive law, if world peace is to result and endure."
Stevenson called for a 'piercing pain, a killing sin' to be run into his heart if it yielded to apathy and despair. The world has had both, and there are signs that they have re-animated conscience. Who is the favourite model of the moderns? Donne, whose poems alternate between a desperate faith and a grave-sweat of remorse! It is odd that he and Dunbar, who was pursued also by death 'gaipand,' should have been resurrected in an age with the same anguish but without the same vision or hope. Carlyle wrote once of eternity 'glaring.' To-day no-one denies that the minds of men are preoccupied with a doom that seems too terrible to bear, and that, as time passes, they smell death from his heels. They call this a dreadful age, but it may be our most glorious, for words like 'charity' and 'contrition,' which have been, to so many, letter-patterns conveying abstractions, may become flesh as in the old morality plays; and the world finds the pleasant working cynicism, which once was its defence-mechanism, as inadequate as cardboard shelters against atomic fire.
A while ago I came one these lines by Pere Teilhard de Chardin, one of the scientists who discovered the Pekin Man. Each word falls heavy. "For twenty years we tried to defend the hope that our troubles were only the last manifestation of a tornado that has passed . . . We must now apply ourselves to the evidence that humanity is about to enter what is probably the greatest period of transformation it has ever known. The seat of the evil from which we are suffering is located in the very foundation of human thought. Something is happening in the general structure of the human consciousness. Another form of life is beginning." These are strange and awful words. If we see human phases in terms of stone age, iron age, atomic age, if he is right that man will be made over, we are still not helpless, for we, unworthy though we are, can carry over into this horrific hour the natural law, faith, and conscience, as once a donkey bore Deity into Egypt.
Thinking men, sensing ruin behind and before, are beginning to see that false values have been spread, and with the realization has arisen a desire to find out the cause. If medicine has suffered as much as education from the doctrinaire experimentalists, there would have been revolt long ago; yet to tinker with minds is even more dangerous. There are reams of theories on education, natural ideas by good, intelligent, utterly well-meaning people whose tragedy is that they lack the touchstone. Many a man who struts in pomp of state or pride of mind might be astonished to know how accurately he is assessed and how small is his stature in the eyes of those who, by his shallow soundings, are unlearned.
If this is an age of transition we, the most adaptable of creatures, can accommodate the present to the future. Our own culture was a combination of Hebrew and Greek, of Messianic and Humanist. If this surmise is true, we may be the link between two civilizations, as the Book of Cenn Faelad and the Annals of Tigernach combined the culture of Latin and Celt; but the change will be gradual. In any mountain stream it takes time for rocks to become boulders, and even man, more impatient than nature, does not eat his wheat in the ear.
As to the new threat, it may, during wars, drive us underground; but we, who were born in a volcanic country with atomic fire under our feet, know how man builds again on the cindered plains; and a Polynesian, transplanted, begs to return to an island gaping with craters. That is economic hope; but for some there is a greater. In the last analysis, if it means annihilation, this life is not all.
It would have been easier to write in reminiscence of a College in which may days were pure happiness, but my theme was chosen for me by the dead. I found a letter, written shortly before he died, by that great classical scholar, Professor John Rankine Brown, who so loved this University. Writing of "the Sahara of unintelligibility into which our poetry appears to have fallen," he said, "I have always been an admirer of that great poet and saintly woman, Christina Rossetti, one of whose pieces appears to me to be among the most immaculate things we have, and well responds to what I have come to regard as the real test of great writing, which is that as often as you read the passage you get the same thrill as you felt when you read it first. There are passages, for instance, in the greatest of all poets, Homer, which—though I have read them repeatedly to my class at Victoria College—I almost break down in reading through stress of emotion. If I have found pleasure in teaching Latin and Greek it is mainly because the poetry of these languages has been a sort of life to my soul." In that last sentence he has given the reason why, though they are to-day both flouted and clouted, the world will return to them. What our age has bemeaned was kept by others in hedge-schools, so that peasants called their children Aeneas. There is a passage in Corneille's Medee reminiscent of to-day:
Medee I, v.
Man has, in greater disasters, tried the same refuge. He has either run into himself or attempted a corporate mind against fate. Neither shelter has availed him. This age is signal for the bewilderment of its intellectuals. Too far east is west. In a horror of sentimentality they have fled from faith, from nature, and from beauty.
Someone told me a story of a young airman who, on returning home, went away from his fellows and took up a handful of earth and grass. A friend who had followed him unobserved made a laughing comment and was amazed at his curtness . . . "I don't care! It's New Zealand!" It was in every respect the right rejoinder, bare of human respect and informed with natural love.
It has, in a corporal sense, been called the hour of the common man, though an adjective capable of more than one meaning is not a happy choice; but, waiving that point, it is even more his hour in a spiritual sense. For what has been sought, by Sartre so starkly and by Kafka so poignantly, many of his kind have found and kept. They know why they were born.
H. G. Wells was by some regarded as a prophet in the realm of reason, but he chose as title for the book which appeared just before his death Mind At the End of Its Tether, and he appeared to have despaired of being able to trace a pattern or to give a compelling argument on conduct. At bay against the future, he seems to have put his hands up, owning no weapon to make it an equal encounter. From that agony of impotence he wrung humility.
Auden, on the other hand, says that all man's actions and diversions are but "the pitiful, maimed expression" of that passion, the "tropism of the soul of God." And Victor Gollancz points out that war's greatest damage is not to possessions, but to the moral sense; and that the value which includes all our other values is respect for personality. It is Gollancz, too, who felt that the presence of suffering in our enemies calls out love. These are heartening signs.
An honest bewilderment in the face of crucial questions none should condemn, but it is not a quality for leadership. It looks as though the world may have to turn to those who have kept the old homespun trinity of virtues, and ordered beneficence enforced by commonsense and conscience. It would not profit us to gain knowledge and lose wisdom.
(nee Armstrong)
The waves broke on the bar in snowy turmoil, but the incoming tide shouldered the headland without violence, and the sea ran to the horizon like a blue banner swaying in the wind. The men on the two or three launches between the harbour mouth and the bar were continually pulling in their lines, re-baiting them and throwing out again, but nobody seemed to be catching any fish. From the direction of Tern Island beyond the horizon, a flight of godwits, dark and rapid in the distance, sped towards the launches and the fishermen on the headland, then wheeled along the line of breakers to the north.
Mr Bishop turned to his son. "There you are, Lex! "he said." There are the godwits.
Among the other fishermen on the rocky ledge, Mr Bishop was as conspicuous as the boy was insignificant. He sat at the extreme point of the headland—the best position, for he had come down before slack water to be sure of capturing it. His long white skinny legs, red with sunburn at the knee-joints, his new panama hat, his insufficiently ragged "old coat" were in themselves enough to single him out, and his hunched shoulders and the rigidity of his posture facing the open sea were a warning to trespassers against his isolation. Though his mood was amiable, any casual beggar of bait would have been intimidated by the unalterable severity of his features which years of teaching dull history to stupid small boys had frozen to the appearance of marble. It was his close-cropped hair, long skull, straight-lined face and thin though sensitive mouth as much as his profession that made his acquaintances regard him as a man born out of his age, some survivor of the persecutions in Holland or the war against King Charles. People who observed the perpetual blinking of his weak eyes behind his rimless spectacles received a distinct shock, as if this ordinary human misfortune were some unworthy secret. As a concession to his fellow-men, for he was aware of his remoteness and at times regretted it, Mr Bishop smoked a pipe, making, however, the mistake of using a large and so rank a cherrywood that the effect was at once repellent and absurd. When he filled it, he seemed to be packing a cabin-trunk for a long voyage.
"There you are, Lex!" he said. "There are the godwits."
"If I had my gun here some might fly over," the boy suggested. "Shall I fetch it, dad?" He peered at his father eagerly and nervously through his horn-rimmed glasses.
That wouldn't be any use, Lex. They can see us here and they won't come near."
"Won't they see us then tomorrow? Shall we have to hide?"
"We dig a trench in a shell-bank, Olsen tells me," Mr Bishop answered. "It will be quite a new experience." He spoke in an ironical tone, conveying the impression that new experiences, even if one welcomed them, were somehow childish and trivial. The boy's face contorted as he worked up courage to say what was in his mind. When he spoke he stuttered slightly. "M-mother says it's really cruel to shoot them."
Mr Bishop winced, and then his face grew stern and bony-looking. "You must learn to be more manly, Lex," he admonished. "I explained to you when I gave you the gun that you must never use it unless shooting for food. The godwits are for the pot. In any case, we are in Rome now, and must do as the Romans do."
Nothing but sermons ever since dad had thought of buying him the gun, Lex thought bitterly. Not to point it at people (as if he would), not to carry it through a fence, not to shoot singing birds, not to boast about it to other boys because he was legally too young to own it, not to do this, not to do that! He stared sulkily at the sea.
It really was a shame to shoot the godwits, Mr Bishop reflected. Marvellous voyagers! They flew all the long ocean from Siberia and then, when they had fattened on the New Zealand beaches, the great slaughter began. Shooting them from motor-cars on Ninety Mile Beach! He rather hoped that tomorrow's expedition would be a failure. But then—life was cruel, he consoled himself. Man was a hunting animal. He imagined the morning light and the clean bark of the guns and felt contented. Lex would buck up in time.
Mr Bishop lit his enormous pipe as if he were officiating at an auto-da-fe. Feeling the knock and strain of his line as the sinker shifted or a green swell rolled glassily by, he felt happy. He watched the dance of the water and the clouds rearing their pure architecture in the sky. It pleased him to see the tiny mussels clustering as thickly as sunflower seeds at his feet and the bigger mussels nearer the waterline. The seaweed, reddish in the green water at the rock's edge, swayed with a lovely abandon, an eternal ballet of the ocean.
Seeking to draw his son into his reverie, Mr Bishop saw that once again, because he liked to pretend the bumping of his sinker on the sea floor was the bite of a snapper, the boy had hauled in his line to rebait and had the cord badly tangled. He was plucking at it despairingly not daring to ask for assistance. As he was about to go to the rescue, Mr Bishop felt a tug on his own line. He sprang to his feet, poised himself, struck as the fish bit again, and methodically drew in the bucking line. The snapper gleamed palely in the deep water and shone copper, rose and silver as he pulled it flapping up the rocks.
"A beauty!" exclaimed Olsen beside him. "Good for you, Mr Bishop!"
"Yes, Olsen," agreed Mr Bishop with judicious
"Aye." Watched by the boy, Olsen was freeing the snapper from Mr Bishop's hook, and grunted assent without looking up. "I came to tell you, Mr Bishop. We'll get away early if it suits you." He threw the fish with a splash into a pool in the ledge.
"Capital!" said Mr Bishop heartily. "You set the time and we'll be ready. I'll bring the boy along, too. He has a new shotgun."
"So you got a new gun, eh?" Olsen said to the boy. "You got your line in a bit of a mess, too. We'll soon fix that."
He was a big man, but his fingers moved deftly among the cord. He like helping the youngster, for he was very sorry for him, so shy and helpless. He was fond of Mr Bishop, too, respecting him as a gentleman and a man of culture. A Swede by birth, with big, coarse, sunburned features, Olsen had spent his whole life with boats and the sea. Some mystery, which he himself had almost forgotten, lay in his past; whether it was drink or a woman or an accident at sea for which he had been held responsible nobody knew. He was Olsen the boatman. An authority on tides and weather, fish and birds, the vagaries of his engine and the lunacies of trippers, he led an idyllic sort of existence, hiring himself and his launch to visitors, catching a few fish for the local market and acting as carrier for settlers on the upper reaches of the harbour. Like the sluggish tides that stole over the mudflats and crept about the green piles of the jetties, he was never exactly idle, but he was never in a hurry. Mr Bishop found his insistent helpfulness on fishing expeditions somewhat trying, but tolerated it because it made him feel rather like a local squire.
Lex, who had been watching the fish gasping and flapping in the pool, came back when his line had been baited and thrown out again and took it from Olsen's huge red hand with a look of gratitude.
"All right, then, Mr Bishop. Six o'clock I'll call for you," said Olsen as he strode away.
They could hear the launch chug-chugging in the morning mist long before they could see it. Olsen made tea for them on his primus, and when they came up again the harbour was a wheatfield of golden light. It was low water and the mudflats were gleaming. A solitary gull, burnished by the sun, looked like a bird out of a legend. The steel of the guns was cold to touch, but there was warmth in the early rays on their faces and the backs of their hands.
"A wonderful day for it, Mr Bishop," said Olsen.
His passenger, smoking his pipe with keen relish in the world of gold and crystal, nodded gravely. Lex was preoccupied watching a ragged youth whom Olsen had brought with him fingering his small-bore with an expression of mingled envy and contempt.
"Never seen anything like that before, have you, Dick?" Olsen drawled.
"I like the big gun," the youth answered. "Won't do much good with that!"
Lex leaned over the side and trailed his fingers in the water. It was surprisingly warm.
Both he and his father were bewildered when Olsen, apparently in the middle of nowhere of the waters, switched off his engine and let go the anchor.
"We take the dinghy here and row to the shell-bank," the boatman explained. "Dick will row it back and pick us up when we're ready. Those birds won't come near us if there's anything queer."
The oars dipped and splashed, spilling bright drops. The shell-bank, a mass of millions of cockles, showed tawny across the water, and when the men landed the cream and golden shells crackled under their feet. It was a tiny island of living cockles and empty shells, sloping palely away under the shallow water as far as the eye could see. Olsen took a shovel and scooped three dug-outs, the shells scratching unpleasantly on the steel as he worked. Dick, rowing back to the launch lost in the mist, was already a long way off. As the ripples lapped their little island, Lex looked apprehensively towards the harbour mouth. What if a big wave came? What would they do when the tide rose? Suppose the ragged boy went to sleep and failed to come to rescue them?
"Well, Olsen, if the launch sinks we'll have a long swim home," said Mr Bishop jocosely. He, too, had felt that they were marooned. How quiet it was! The shell-bank, the green shallows, and the harbour fading into the fog, all absolutely silent except when a shell rattled in a retreating wavelet.
"No need to worry about that," the Swede re-assured him, and Mr Bishop wished he had not spoken.
They heard guns in the distance.
"Aye!" said the Swede. "They're shooting along the beach, Mr Bishop. That'll bring the birds into the harbour. We'd better take cover."
Water had seeped into the hollows he had scooped, and it took an effort of will to lie down, fully clothed, among the wet shells. At water-level the harbour seemed to be brimming over, already engulfing the islet. With a shock of terror Lex saw a dogfish swimming a few feet away from him. But his fright was soon lost in sheer wonder at a sight which to both men as well as the boy seemed like some miraculous revelation. It was a huge snapper, so big that the fin on its back jutted out of the water like a sail, feeding on the cockles. They could see it flurry the shells about and then bob upwards while they imagined the hard jaws crackling the shell-fish like a nut-cracker
"We could have shot it," Lex suggested, playing the man.
Peering at him through his spectacles over the rampart of shells, Mr Bishop said icily, "We would have frightened the godwits." He was feeling damp and cramped and undignified, and the fact that the boy was shivering and blue with cold increased his irritation.
"Look!" said Olsen softly. "Here they are!"
The godwits, perhaps fifty in the flock, were flying directly towards them in a swift dark phalanx from the sea. The mist, Mr Bishop realized in a flash, had cleared. The surf, breaking creamily on the bar beyond the protecting headland, looked mountainously tall. He thought of one calm evening of early summer, years ago, when he had first seen the birds coming in from Siberia, a great constellation of them with their wings beating out a thin, urgent melody in the darkening air.
As the godwits saw the men, they wheeled sharply overhead, and the guns shouted together. One bird, as if of its own swift intent, plunged into the sea like a diver from the high board.
Olsen waded out to retrieve it. "The boy shot it!" he laughed as he came back, dangling the limp bundle. "And a good shot, too, boy!"
"Yes, you shot it, Lex," Mr Bishop said. Lex was biting his lips and there were tears in his eyes.
"But I didn't," he cried. "I didn't!"
"Course you did," Olsen encouraged him. "I saw the one you aimed at."
Lex struggled with his conscience and his desire to please his father and the big Swede. "They came so swiftly," he burst out. "The way they turned. It was too quick. I didn't shoot." He looked down at the shiny blue steel of the gun his father had given him.
No more birds came over, and soon it was time to go home. By the time they had reached the launch the tide had covered the shell-bank, and unbroken water stretched to the grey-green shore. Not too depressed, for at least he had been out godwit shooting, Lex sat in silence while the launch chugged home. He was hungry and looked forward to breakfast. Mr Bishop smoked his pipe, watched the water going by, and gave an occasional nod or grunt as Olsen apologized for the poor bag and recalled fabulous successes in former expeditions.
"Well, at least you got one, Mr Bishop," said the Swede, handing him the bird when they reached the jetty.
"Damn him!" thought the schoolmaster with a surge of sympathy for his son. "He knows very well he shot it himself."
Sydney Australia
Sydney, Australia
This is the tragic story of an author who had only one plot; and who, though he wrote a lot of stories and a lot of poetry, used the same one for the whole lot. Maybe he didn't have enough grey matter in his cranium to provide a hydroponic bath for a geranium. But what he had got he certainly made the most of, and he left a million or so more words than Ogdenash or Saroyan or I will ever boast of.
For this author was one of these fortunate men who know almost from birth that we come into this world only to pass out again. He'd got the plot early. Maybe it was only eight by three, but it was big enough to hold his thoughts while living and his bones post-humously; and even if it was up on a hill among a lot of crosses, he wasn't the sort of fellow who would give anything away to cut his losses.
This author's plot had been left by a maiden aunt. She had bought it for a prospective husband, but had never married, so she left it instead to her unborn nephew (or niece, as the case might be) when her plans miscarried. The only condition was that the nephew (or niece, as the case might be) would keep watch on the next plot in perpetuity. Or at any rate during his (or her) lifetime keep an eye on the plants etcetera which normally grow on the graves of arid aunts etcetera.
So this author (who turned out to be a nephew after all, thereby saving further parentheses) was brought up from birth to venerate one small piece of earth. Even when he was supposed to be at school he would play truant, and as a rule would be found trying to stretch his four-foot body over his own bit of ground. His one ambition was to grow up to be three feet wide and eight feet tall, so that when he was ready to be buried he would occupy it all. In fact it wouldn't be pedantic to claim that if Byron was a buffoon this author was the first Great Necromantic; because after spending six of his seven ages studying his plot instead of working for wages, he completely revolutionised literature and annoyed the followers of Marx and Freud, by proving that economics and psychology can't bring happiness because life and death are merely two aspects of the same thing. All you've got to bring to life, this author said, is an appreciation of the dead.
This author didn't even write in the old-fashioned fashion about human passion. He'd been too busy on his plot to experience any, although many's the time he'd heard lovers' foot-steps pass and once he'd even heard a couple laughing in the grass. Instead he concentrated on eternal things like the way the wind moans in the trees, and the way weeds sprout among stones, and seed, and die away; and how, on a later day, the new plants spring up again. Only to seed, and die again, like men . . . Only men didn't really matter: to the daisies they were only bread and butter.
If you think that's a pretty dull theme, I'd remind you that it doesn't necessarily make the narrator any duller than T. S. Eliot or Saroyan, or for that matter the Creator. They've all three got a pretty good idea of what everything is about, and they've come to the same conclusion as far as I can make out. Anyway this author was so serious about it that he wrote twenty books in prose and another twenty in verse without describing anything more cheerful than a decorated hearse; and in his whole lifetime he was never known to laugh at anything except a humorous epitaph, written by a nephew whose ambition is still to inherit the plot on the hill.
For I guess that if this author had guessed what was going to happen to him eventually he would have been pretty miserable all right. For when he froze on his plot one night, trying to keep the snow off the daisies whose grandchildren he was hoping to push up himself at a later date, they pried him loose and cremated him. And I know enough about this author to know that he would have been pretty crabby if he'd guessed that, after all he'd been through, they'd stick the urn with the ashes in Westminster Abbey.
There is something exhilarating in talking about isms.The Spike, editorial1911 .
We write up our College motto' Sapientia magis auro desideranda' and having made this homage to the spirit of education we turn to profit making . . . Business is the centre around which life moves, commerce has come to set the ideals for most of our people; buying price, selling price, profits are the new Trinity.Prof. ,T. A. Hunter 1918 .
(
We are led to believe) that the place in the minds of the public has become a hotbed of sedition, a forcing house for disloyalty and disaffection, and a crawling mass of corruption.,J. C. Beaglehole 1923 .
Anarchic propagandists.,Canon James 1933 .
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.Manifesto of theV.U.CStudents,1941 .
Teen Agers and Bobby Soxers Worship Tsar Stalin I.Freedom,.1949
Watersiders and students have long shared a common pillory. The watersider is a mischievous animal. The student reads books and is popularly believed to question not only the Scriptures but the Evening Post; to doubt not only God but Murphy. Yet the Red Flag has never been broken above Victoria College, nor does the Internationale yet ring round the lecture rooms. It would, indeed, be incorrect to say that the radicals have ever been more than a leaven in the mass at Victoria. But it would not be a mistake to say that Victoria has a tradition which is not shared by the other colleges—a tradition of tolerance, of fair play and of human decency. That tradition existed in
A willingness to hear other points of view has always been a Victoria characteristic. The students were as anxious to hear Mr H. E. Holland in
Again, in
The University, as Dr Beaglehole has put it, is not an abstraction; it is an institution, and institutions are part of the social system. And, as Marx says the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class, any challenge to those ideas is a challenge to the rule of the class. Businessmen accustomed to owning the bodies of their employees are surprised and hurt when they find that they cannot always possess all their minds. As a Mr Roundhill warned the Wellington Christian Businessmen's Club last year with refreshing candour: "The University Colleges are the breeding ground for ideas that are so revolutionary that they can affect the businessman's leisure and pocket." Perhaps this is rather an exaggeration, Victoria may have affected the businessman's complacency when in
Radicalism of all kinds at Victoria has been mostly the concern of small groups, the first of which would seem to be the Heretics Club, founded in The Spike, were apparently eugenics, hell fire, theosophy, Chinese political philosophy and the legitimacy of marriage with one's deceased wife's sister. A war casualty, its successor was the Free Discussions Club which, beginning in
In
There has always been a section of the students which has never been very happy about soldiering. In The Spike editorially questioned the super patriotism of the Senate in recommending that £800 be spent on the teaching of military science when other faculties were starved. And again in
During the years of sycophancy and national humiliation from Salient) refused to condone the murder of the Spanish Republic as it refused to swallow Chamberlain. Nor was Herr Ramm to find Victoria College a particularly happy atmosphere for the propagation of the political theory of the Master Race. It should never be forgotten that, with the exception of the Communist Press, Salient alone among N.Z. journals came out against Munich. Even in the Extravaganzas reaction found no comfort. I remember the '39 show where Nev. is represented as a travelling salesman. First he draws from his bag for Hit. a large checkered cloth. He then offers a rarer and much more valuable material, the Union Jack. At this point a trampling in the Dress Circle marked the exit from the Opera House of a well-known Conservative member of the staff, frothing.
Ron Meek's point was made forcibly as it had to be—yet Meek was right.
Later too, as the Manifesto of the Victoria College Students adopted by the Association in
"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."
It will have been noticed that most of the radical groupings of the students over the years were hardly more than discussion circles. Though many of their members were to play prominent parts in progressive movements outside the College—such as the late Gordon Watson (who was to become Secretary of the Communist Party of N.Z.)—it was not till
The preamble to the Socialist Club Constitution says that: "We, the members of the Socialist Club of Victoria University College, recognising the need for unified action on the part of the progressive elements in this student body, hereby constitute ourselves as an organisation for the purpose of uniting all politically conscious students in their advance to Socialism." As its objects make plain, its keynote is organisation and action. It aims to further political activity of a Socialist character among students, to bring students into contact with the Labour Movement and the working class, and to promote solidarity among all progressive youth organisations in New Zealand and abroad.
The Socialist Club has protested publicly against the militarisation of science in the Universities, against Red baiting, against the refusal to allow Maoris to go with the All Blacks, against attempts to crush civil liberties. It takes the credit for drawing up the bursary scheme which has now been endorsed by N.Z. U.S.A. It pioneered the N.Z. Student Labour Federation which links Labour and Radical Clubs in all the Colleges. It is affiliated with the Australian Student Labour Federation.
The Socialist Club has the distinction of being one of the first organisations in the world to protest, by its procession in
Henry Ford once said that you could have one of his cars in any colour as long as it was black. There are those who are willing to allow the students to hold any kind of political view so long as it is conservative. In the Socialist Club they have met their match. And there can be no doubt that, despite whatever training in the ideological principles of "Western Civilisation" (as though indeed civilisation was bounded by latitudes and longitudes), the Chancellor may persuade the Senate to initiate in the University, Socialism will grow and capture the imagination of the students. It will do so because it is true.
Lord Melbourne once startled a dinner party by displaying an intimate knowledge of the early Christian fathers. The incident throws a curious light on the mind of one of England's lesser statesmen, a man best known for his witty and cynical sexual immorality. It has also a nostalgic flavour, a recherche du temps perdu, when the dominant figures of the European hierarchy were steeped in classicism, and humanist education was within sight of its nemesis in the form of universal literacy. If the Melbournes of earlier centuries were socially conservative, they upheld also a tradition of intellectual tolerance and of a wide culture which was the mark of a gentleman.
The significance of the anecdote becomes more clearly apparent when we contrast the position of the humanist scholar of the 18th and 19th centuries with his position in the present year.
Among the marks of the humanist are a love of learning for its own sake, intellectual tolerance, and a strict regard for intellectual honesty. Contrast them with the qualities of that form of enlightenment which is dominant among the literate classes of the new nations, such as Russia, India, Japan and the United States of America. There, popular education is utilitarian; it is fiercely intolerant of ideas opposed to the national myths; its criterion of intellectual truth is too often conformity with the economic and political aims of the dominant classes. Those who believe in such crude historical fictions as "national self-determination" and "the class-war," are ever alert to suppress the independent scholar who dares to expose their fallacies.
It would be stupid to assert that there was ever a time in Europe when complete intellectual tolerance existed. But neither was there a time when Europe was anti-intellectual. Conflicts of opinion were between scholar and scholar, lawyer and lawyer, theologian and theologian. The man of education was an intellectual aristocrat, and even as a persecutor, he was an idealist. Humanism survived into the 19th century, partly because its bitterest opponents were scholars themselves. The combination of intellectual competence and cynicism which marked Nazi biology and jurisprudence, and which still marks the Russian approach to the arts, is a product of the mass age.
It is not the case that the "new" educations are the legitimate children of the old European classical culture, nor that there will develop out of them a more tolerant culture. The two growths have different historical origins and are directed towards different ends. The older education was that of a relatively leisured elite, a learned semi-aristocratic body of knowledge and opinion which ultimately benefited mankind through the actions of individual humanists. The new education is that of mass man, whose policy is to use the knowledge of quantitative science for the purposes of a barbarian. Its factual content may be enormous, but it is not illumined by a spirit of intellectual honesty. In the hands of a moral barbarian, it is a threat to civilization.
Modern propaganda techniques have conveyed this literacy to enormous masses of people, and in its crudest form, to precisely those masses who have been previously untouched by European thought. By reason of their number, their economic constriction and their primitive vitality, they threaten to hold the balance of power in the modern world. The global community is now so closely knit, that unless international harmony is established in a very short time, the newly-literate races must inherit the mastery of the earth, an event which will mean the extinction of European humanism, since humanism and the modern literate barbarism cannot co-exist in a warring world.
It is characteristic of tyranny that it cannot tolerate any flaw in its supremacy. Having obtained power in face of opposition it bends all its forces to the task of retaining that power. Its other objects are secondary, and are ultimately directed towards the prime object, survival. The humanist tolerates peaceful differences of opinion; indeed he encourages them if his humanism is mature, in the hope of attaining to a more advanced synthesis. The tyrant resents them, and must destroy them because intellectual independence threatens his peace of mind, his self-esteem, and above all his security. He must "make windows into men's souls." He will tolerate only those forms of education which cry "Hosannah" to him and his policies.
There is no tyrant more arbitrary than he who governs mass man by force, and it is by force that the masses must seize control of the world and be themselves governed. If, then, as seems likely, the intellectual traditions of Europe go down before the vast, rawly-educated, extra-European communities, the members of the free universities of the world can look forward to the snuffing-out of their culture, and to being themselves proscribed as enemies of the People. Nor will the victors escape destruction. The wreckage will be complete,
The Revolt of the Masses, quotes with his own approval, an opinion that the simultaneous execution of a handful of selected men would result in the destruction of modern society. It is not unlikely that such an event will occur, and that, with the great minds of the world, will perish also the Melbournes of this age, the undistinguished men who love learning for its own sake.
When the appearance of Somervell's Pocket Toynbee raised a crop of reviews, most critics (from Professor Geyl to the gentleman who complained that Toynbee's technical terms did not mean what he defined them to mean) agreed in pointing out Toynbee's ambiguous position towards the most important question raised by works like his: that of law versus free will, of regularity versus individuality in history. Now at last, in the
The first lecture distinguishes two forms which the idea of uniformity has taken: the Judaeo-Christian idea of the "Law of God" and the Greek idea of" Laws of Nature. "The latter are mechanical and purposeless, the former was personal and led to a definite aim. But when it was applied too rigorously, it eliminated the possibility of human choice and that was one reason why it was abandoned. Ever since, thought has tended to assume a dichotomy between the non-human part of the universe, governed by the laws of Nature, and the human part, not subject to any laws. But during the last two hundred years, many fields of human affairs have been captured by science, and anthropology, psychology and economics have applied the methods of science to the greater part of the human world, and brought it under the laws of Nature. This is in keeping with the trend of human thought which can only move in terms of order. Again, the field of history has been extended from political history to include the lives of ordinary people and thus overlaps with many of the new "human sciences." Yet most historians, though in their work they necessarily impose a pattern, still in theory deny its existence. This is because the Law of God has been abandoned and the laws of nature cannot be applied successfully, as (a) no detail of historical knowledge is ever finally settled; (b) "civilizations" are the smallest units of historical study, and there have been very few specimens of them.
The second and third lecture discuss in greater detail the problem of uniformity in the human world. Such uniformities undoubtedly exist. Insurance (especially insurance against burglary, which is a conscious act of will) has proved that predictions can be made even about conscious human behaviour. Economic laws, like those of "trade cycles," are generally accepted; yet only fifteen to twenty instances of the "standard cycle" have been observed—about the same as the number of civilizations which the historian can study. When these are compared, certain laws do seem to emerge. (There follows a summary of the familiar Toynbeean laws of the development and decline of civilizations, and some illustrations of less general laws.) What are the causes of such uniformities? To some extent, no doubt, the admitted uniformities in the physical environment. But they are insufficient, and Toynbee finds a more likely cause in the sub-rational part of human nature. It is now recognized that the unconscious is subject to natural laws, and perhaps the regularities of history are due to it. This would explain why they are most easily observable in "decline and fall" periods, as in those periods the un-conscious gets out of control. And perhaps the cyclic rhythms of history mark the stages by which the conscious intellect gains control over the unconscious; thus the result of the long and disastrous experience of the Greek decline was that reason overcame the unconscious city-state loyalty which had caused that decline. Now this holds out some hope for our civilization. For it is obvious that recognition of such unconscious influences, and education to overcome them, can remove us from the sphere of operation of natural laws. And it appears from past examples that, at any rate before the establishment of the "universal state" (which we are only approaching), the life of a civilization can still be saved. Thus our best hope lies in preventing the establishment of that state through "knock-out" wars and reaching peaceful agreement, before the "universal state" marks the exhaustion of the spiritual forces of our civilization.
The last lecture deals with uniqueness in history. It is obvious that the rate of social change is not constant. Thus the ship evolved rapidly between
Finally, how is this element of choice related to the element of law? Perhaps the personal Law of God and the mechanical laws of Nature must be combined to give us the whole truth. Thus the wheel, if looked at by itself, may seem to be turning in senseless repetition (as history seemed to, e.g., Marcus Aurelius); but the wheel may belong to a cart driven in a definite direction. Similarly, repetitive cycles of events may be the foundation of directed progress. Thus the cycle of day and night is the basis for non-recurrent human experience; the cycle of human life and death for the cumulative heritage of a civilization; and the rise and fall of civilizations perhaps for progress in religious life. If God's Law is direction and not compulsion, we have the power of choice and may freely progress in the accessibility of means of grace in life.
Toynbee's argument falls into distinct parts, and not all of them seem to be of equal soundness or value. He is maintaining, first, that there are historical "laws" which are the result of the sub-rational element in man (and, as a corollary, that our civilization can still be saved by realisation of these laws so that they may be overcome by conscious action); and secondly, that the life-and-death cycle of civilisations is the foundation of man's spiritual progress under divine guidance. The first point seems firmly established and important because of its very obviousness. With characteristic insight and clarity of exposition, Toynbee has sketched a solution to one of the most difficult problems of historiography. The two extreme schools may still be unsatisfied and maintain their strangely paradoxical positions: either (like the followers of Marx or Huntington) reducing history to the workings of man's acquisitive instinct or the influence of his environment and thus eliminating reason as an independent factor in human development while introducing it (as some form of scientific method) in the study of that development; or (like Collingwood) making human reason in its individual manifestations the chief object of historical study while denying the historian the right to use his own in classifying the actions he studies. The reason why the "human sciences" have shown themselves so successful up to a point and helpless beyond it is just that autonomy of the rational faculty which these sciences are beginning to recognise. It appears that at some stage of "evolution" (whatever precisely that may be) something is evolved which is superior to and independent of the process which evolved it, and this is perhaps the idea expressed in Sartrian existentialism by the responsible man's rejection of the gods (cf. Orestes in The Flies). Moreover, it is the evolution of this faculty which marks the rise of "civilisation." Thus anthropology (as the study of non-civilised man) gives a complete explanation of the societies it studies because the rational faculty is not significantly developed in them, i.e., not sufficiently developed to influence their corporate actions. But its "civilised" equivalent, sociology, cannot give a complete (indeed, in some cases appears to give hardly a significant) account of the societies it studies because the development of reason has withdrawn them from the laws of nature to the extent of that development. This solves the problem of historical prediction: such prediction can only be conditional, but within its limits is certainly valid. The historian can only say: "This will happen unless . . ."; but, if he is a good historian, it will happen unless . . . The next slump will come at its due time, unless we realise the workings of the unconscious human mechanism that produces slumps; if we do, it will not come. And so on.
The corollary that follows for our civilisation is perhaps a more hopeful one than Toynbee thinks. There is no need to despair of our future, even if the "universal state" is established by force, provided the state thus established does not enforce a mechanistic intepretation of human reason and history, which would leave us exposed to the natural law prescribing the decay of civilisations.
Toynbee's second conclusion is of such vast scope that we cannot discuss it in detail. But it does not seem so soundly based. For one thing, while his first conclusion is supported by the difference between the simplicity and uniformity of primitive behaviour as compared with the complexity and variety of civilised societies (a point recognised by all historians), as well as by the "human sciences' and statistics he quotes, which are all based on sub-rational influences on human behaviour, this second argument has hardly any support in fact. Of the fifteen or so civilisations Toynbee recognises, nearly all are extinct without spiritual issue. The only definite spiritual progress he can point to is that from Greek and "Syriac" civilization to Christianity. The barrenness of the others he could, no doubt legitimately,
A friend of mine recently told me of his amazing experiences in an American City.
"When I was a young man," he said, "much excitement was caused at the Senior High School I attended by the announcement of a summer school for the public, which fell due during the school vacation.
The school was to be held in a large old Georgian House just out of Bournell City. For a certain charge advertised, anybody could stay at the house and take a week's course in a wide variety of subjects specified. "Pupils are not forced to work," ran the prospectus, "the classes are purely optional, but it is hoped that sufficient interest will be displayed in the cultural as well as the social aspects of this course."
The boys at my school were very excited over the classes in photography and aeronautics, which included flights over the surrounding country, while everyone else was very interested in the University Extension Lectures, the debates, dances and moonlight picnics. This evidently was the "social aspect" of the course.
I was attracted very much by all this, and in the summer holidays a week before the school I had decided to take a general course including an introduction to psychology.
The opening day was very exciting with much noise and high spirits. Everybody was being introduced to everyone else, everyone was discussing classes and everyone was trying to impress everyone else. It was in the midst of all this excitement that I first became aware of Edmund Brandygall.
He was standing away from the crowd with his vacant eyes cast towards the ground.
I moved by him to see his face, noticing as I did his unusual clothes. His face was a thin one, with a nose that gave the impression it had been badly squashed in his mother's womb. As a result his nostrils existed in a state of continual antipathy, both facing in opposite directions. In his hand was an orange umbrella which, I later observed, he carried even when he was walking about indoors. His worst feature was his trousers, which contracted in the legs when he moved, displaying by this action several inches of long bony calf.
The only person I saw him speak to during the first day was the organiser, who questioned him as to his course.
You can imagine this person created a great deal of interest among the students. Nobody knew where he came from, but everybody had a theory. Most of us (being young) thought he was a foreign duke leading a Bohemian existence, while the more unimaginative said he was "somebody from the nuthouse."
It was useless speaking to Brandygall himself as he refused to speak. Well, the week went on and I entered into the social life and enjoyed myself a great deal. I did not think much about Brandygall, except in the psychology class where I would be disconcerted to see him sitting up there in the back row staring fixedly at the lecturer.
He never spoke in the class during the whole week. Even the lecturer gave up making advances and began to look upon him as merely a piece of furniture.
The rest of the day Brandygall could be seen lolling about in the sun, or standing under a tree muttering with his orange umbrella held high above his head.
People stopped talking about him, and by the end of the week nobody knew any more of him than they had at the beginning. The School broke up and that was the last I ever saw of Brandygall.
The holidays soon went past and it was well into the next school term that I was approached by a girl who had been at the Summer School with me.
"You remember that strange man who was at the School last summer?"
"What man?" I said.
"The one who had a horrible nose and always carried an umbrella."
"Oh. Brandygall! yes—what about him—what's happened?"
"Nothing's wrong, only I wondered if you had seen the book that's all over town."
"What book?"
"Well," she said, "all the kids reckon he's the one who wrote it, but I couldn't remember his name, so I thought I'd ask you."
This interested me very much, so the girl took me to a bookshop after school, and on one of the display counters was a thin booklet entitled "New Ideas on the Formation of Belief" by E. H. Brandygall.
I immediately bought a copy. It was by him all right, for right on the frontpiece was a photograph of a smirking person with antagonistic nostrils. Underneath was written, "The Author." That night at home I began to read the book.
It began in this manner :
" Recently, while attending a class in psychology, J was struck by the thought which I now record ..." and was signed E. H. Brandygall.
I went to bed early that night and in a few hours had read the book.
It began with a long irrelevant account of how psychology had grown in America, of the influence of William James and McDougall, then, without any explanation at all, it began to talk of how coffee tasted much better if you added salt.
"He must be crazy," I said. From here the text continued, jumping on to Freud's theory of the libidinal Unconscious. He did not add to it or comment upon it in any way but merely quoted from Freud's books. As before, it was quite irrelevant.
The book became more and more steeped in the jargon of psychologists, and many of the sentences did not make sense.
"The work of Pavlov on Conditioned Reflexes," he said, "resembles that of the early Behaviorists in that mind does depend upon neither the attributed of wish fulfilment, nor the newly noted conditioned reflexes."
I puzzled over this sentence for a long time, then I shrugged my shoulders and read on.
"In this way," he continued, "and from these premises, supplemented by my own experience, I can assure the reader that coffee tastes much better if salt has been added."
Late that night I finished the book and discovered that in none of it had any ideas on belief been mentioned. To me the book was a meandering collection of long sentences. I threw it aside and went to sleep muttering about lunatics. In the morning I looked to see who had published the book.
"Printed at the Revolutionary Press (Inc.), publishers of Astrological, Occult, Mystical, Psychical and other books."
A few days later there was a book review in the local press.
"New Ideas on Belief Formation"
It ran as follows :
"A book which should be of interest to the layman as well as the student. The author, with an expressionistic style and a wit suggestive of irony, reviews some of the problems of modern psychology. Far be it from us to wish to come to grips with the author, but it is felt some of his implied thoughts may not work in harmony with the American Way of Life. Be that as it may, we would recommend his book on beliefs to anyone who is interested in seeing in their true perspective some of the problems which beset the modern world."
The review caused me to feel bewildered, and I wondered if perhaps he wasn't mad after all.
During the next week a letter appeared in the correspondence columns criticising Brandygall's work and echoing my own early sentiments by calling it "prattle and rubbish."
Six people immediately answered and one letter was from a sociologist at the State University who suggested that the critic be more tolerant of new ideas. A Methodist minister mentioned Brandygall in his sermon as a "contemporary Christian mystic." In a New York magazine was printed an article describing a Rationalist lecture at which belief formation had been dealt with. The speaker had never mentioned or even heard of Brandygall's book but most people connected the lecture with the book.
When questioned, a lecturer in psychology said that, although he had difficulty in interpreting the thoughts of this writer, he found he agreed with the bulk of his inferences, even though they were couched in obscure language. A fellow lecturer wrote an article on the book ridiculing it and the people who were taken in by it.
Students held a demonstration accusing this lecturer of conservatism toward new ideas; and a cartoon appeared in their magazine of the critical lecturer as an ostrich with his head in the sand. Later in the month an art magazine published a leading article on surrealist expression as a literary and aesthetic thought vehicle. In this article the sentences of Brandygall were compared to those of Gertrude Stein.
For a while there was a lull, but the book continued to be sold at all the bookshops in my town. The next development seemed to be a reaction against Brandygall and much hot correspondence took place in the newspapers. People called one another ignoramuses and some even talked of the "Principles of Psychology."
The correspondence went on for so long that a woman who was well known for her spiritualistic inclinations published a pamphlet called
An open letter was published by the same Occult Society and circulated all over the country.
A lecturer challenged the women writer of "Brandygallism Explained" to a public debate on the subject "that Brandygall has made a new contribution to psychological knowledge." She accepted, and the debate took place in the Town Hall. It was well advertised and aroused quite a lot of interest, so that when I arrived at the Hall I noticed a large crowd outside waiting to enter.
The lecturer in his opening speech read many passages from the book and ridiculed them. He pointed out all the irrelevant remarks about salted coffee, as the ravings of a demented intellect. The woman replied by informing the lecturer that the remarks about coffee were just a few little jokes in the surrealist fashion upon sense perception, and that the mind was not demented but Great. It was only the conservatism of the age that prevented the ideas from taking immediate hold. She concluded by comparing the situation to that existing when the "Origin of Species" was first published. The judge gave the decision to the lecturer, but the audience, which consisted mostly of men, voted for the woman.
The debate acted only as a stimulus for the supporters of Brandygall. All over America in most of the large towns a Brandygallian Society of Ultimate Reality sprang up, and held weekly meetings. Business men were canvassed for financial support and they, on hearing of its semi-religious significance, paid up like frightened rabbits. And shortly after the publication of the second edition of the book, many psychologists labelled themselves Anti-Brandygallians. Even before the third edition came out, certain people believed that the gospel was being misinterpreted, and so the Neo-Brandygallian Guild was formed."
Here I interrupted my friend to ask him how it had all ended.
"It hasn't ended," he replied, "probably in America it's still going on."
"Well," I said, "how did it end for you?"
He smiled. "For me," he said, grinning broadly, "it ended when I left America—or rather when I saw this."
He handed me a faded yellow cutting from a newspaper. I began to read.
"A man whose identity is unknown was arrested this morning for causing a disturbance in a City thoroughfare. When searched, all that was found was a watch bearing the initials E.H.B. He has been certified insane."
The victoria college students' society is the students' representative body, which acts in all negotiations between the students and the professors, College Councils, etc. To the Society all the athletic and social clubs are affiliated. The business is carried on by an Executive Committee appointed at the Annual General Meeting,
The following is a short history of the Society:
On Saturday,
It was decided that the Patron of the Society each year should be the Chairman of the Professorial Board, and for
It was decided at the same meeting that the newly elected Committee should frame rules for a Debating Society. On the
On the 24th May the Society entertained the students at a concert and dance, which was such a success that a ball was held in the Sydney Street Schoolroom on the 18th July.
At a meeting held soon after, a resolution was passed to the effect that the students strongly protest against the Ministerial residence in Tinakori Road as a site for the College, and a copy of this resolution was forwarded to the Victoria College Council.
At a Committee meeting held on the 14th September it was decided that a Sub-Committee should wait on Mr Hogg, M.H.R., to obtain through him an introduction to the Government, from whom it might ask permission to use the Parliamentary tennis courts. Permission was ob-tained, and the Committee elected the first College Tennis Committee. On
In this second year the students were entertained by the Society at several social functions.
The College colours were fixed as brown and yellow, but they have since been changed to the present maroon and pale blue.
Last year,
The students were entertained at the usual dance at the beginning of the year, at a dance on Diploma Day and later on in the year at a euchre party and dance.
On the day of the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, the students marched to the stand given them by the Reception Committee, wearing cap and gown, and carrying a banner on which, in bold letters, was inscribed, "We have eyes, but no site."
This year, for the first time, the Committee was photographed. It is a matter for regret that this was not done in the two previous years, as the array of photographs of each year's Committee would be of the greatest interest to the students of future generations.
For the first time, too, an effort was made to suitably celebrate Diploma Day of
In
This year we have commenced to publish a College magazine, which we expect to meet with the support it deserves.
Various minor matters have also been undertaken successfully for the benefit of the students by the Society during the three and a half years of its infancy.
(Reprinted from The Spike, Vol. I, No. I, June, 1902.)
The invitation to write a message for the Jubilee number of The Spike gives me the opportunity to express a thing that has for years been present in my mind. It is the realisation of the great help that I have always received from students whether they were taking my subject or not. The friendliness and confidence they have always shown, the freedom with which many of them have discussed their problems have constituted much of the pleasure of life and to the students of those many years I express my gratitude.
Mutual understanding between teachers and students marked the College from its earliest days. The four foundation professors on their arrival from overseas were awaited by a body of men and women eager to enter upon a university career. A considerable proportion of them were somewhat older than first year students usually are and not a few had high ideals and the purpose to carry them into effect. Professors and students founded a College in which academic aim and lofty purposes were to go hand-in-hand. So successful were they that it can be truly said that there has not been a year from the foundation of the College until now in which many men and women of cultured intellect and noble purpose have not gone forth from the doors of the College to take their fitting place in the world.
In its first half-century the College has made healthy and vigorous growth and it can offer many advantages to the student of today. Its buildings, although already outgrown, are such as men can work in: its library is well-ordered, and is growing rapidly: there is a keen and devoted staff": there are many scholarships and other benefactions founded by men of wealth and goodwill: and, above and beyond, there is a tradition of earnest purpose. In the world's fight for freedom its men and women have played a very gallant part. Let the students of today and of the days that follow be but true to this tradition and the College will become as great and noble as any seat of learning ever has been.
Some things stand out very clearly in my memory of seven years at Victoria College: years which were of quite exceptional interest in the history of the College, and of great importance in my own life.
I came to the College in its tenth year (
I had come from experience—in Scotland and England—of two of the ancient British Universities, to what was then one of the youngest and smallest of such institutions; and my most vivid impression is of pristine freshness and loveliness in the corporate personal life of the College ("lovely and pleasant in their lives")—which is comparable, in my memory, only to the glory of the virgin bush, as I first saw it at Ohakune (when the Main Trunk Line went through, in
If that reads like hyperbole of exaggeration, my answer is that it describes something that has remained part of my own life: a unique experience in half-a-century of university life in four different countries, and an oft-told tale of my later years. If an explanation of the phenomenon is sought, it is to be found in quite exceptional leadership of the student bodies and the happy relationship of the student leaders with their professorial seniors. The men were round about my own age: part-time students, with stretched-out courses—or recent graduates, employed in the city, who were fired by intense enthusiasm about having a college of their own and keen to make of it all they wanted it to be. They had with them women of the same calibre (if not of quite the same age!) and of immense capacity for unselfish service of the
The quality of it all was conspicuous in the tone and spirit of the College social functions—as of a happy and well-bred family: in particular, the College "Carnivals"—something of which has been captured and preserved in the verse of The Old Clay Patch (of which I have subscribers' copies, but also one—specially bound—presented to me by V.U.C.S.A. in Punch standard!
I remained long enough in Wellington to see this "morning glory" begin to "fade into the light of common day" (inevitably, I suppose). But its influence on myself—in my subsequent task of steering the course of a college, within a great University in a sister Dominion—could hardly be exaggerated; and something of that same influence remains, I gather, as an inner glow in the continuing life of Victoria College.
The other main feature of my memories of Victoria University College is less happy, but no less significant. It began with the shock of realizing all that was involved in the examination system of the University of New Zealand, at that time. (If I had looked into this carefully before applying for the Chair of Mathematics, I would probably not have proceeded with my application.) My experience had been of examinations utterly subordinate in university education; and it was quite impossible for me to take any other view; so I was a rebel against that system right from the start—and almost at once in the firing line of the conflict (provoked into self-defence).
Professor Laby joined us in
The eventual triumphant success of the Reform movement stands out clearly in Beaglehole's Historical Study of the University of New Zealand, and in the subsequent leading role of Professor Hunter in both the College and the University. What is not there on record, is the intensive education it meant for ourselves in the true "idea of a university" and in the working out of that idea. That, and the experience of being Chairman of the Professorial Board in my last two and a half years (I "acted" for Professor Hunter in the second half of
In the work of my own Chair: our supply, at that time, of students adequately grounded in Mathematics was far too meagre; but the experience of having to teach (unaided in the actual teaching) over a very wide range of pure and applied mathematics (fortunately not all required in the same year!) was invaluable to me in the investigations of groundwork, in which I am specially interested. I am at present writing up work which was begun in those days—so that Victoria University College is an integral part of my life, in that very real sense also.
But there was not then, in Wellington, sufficient opportunity for either Professor Laby or myself to do the work for which we were, respectively, specially suited; and we were fortunate that such opportunity did, in fact, open up for us elsewhere. It is perhaps significant that the friendship and collaboration we began in Wellington deepened and strengthened till he died in
One of my last duties, as Chairman of the Professorial Board, was to make arrangements (on Reform lines) for the appointment of my successor in the Chair of Mathematics; and the event proved that that, at least, had been well
I may perhaps be permitted to add that we ourselves have, in recent years, a new bond with V.U.C. in the marriage of one of our daughters to a graduate of the College (Henry Abraham).
To the College, and all old friends and colleagues, we send cordial greetings, and warmest felicitations, on this auspicious occasion.
Professor of Mathematics in Victoria University College, 1908-14; Master of Ormond College, University of Melbourne, 1915-43.
I have to thank the Principal of Victoria College for this opportunity of communicating (per medium of The Spike) with old students and to assure them of my continued interest in them and their work. May they all go forward to enlighten the minds, strengthen the bodies, and cheer the spirits of a clientele well worthy of their best efforts.
The period ending in the Jubilee of Victoria College has been a vitally important one for the teaching profession. At the beginning of the century the University had little to offer the teacher beyond the cultural subjects of the ordinary degree Course. While the doctor and the lawyer had special professional schools the teacher had to be content with Mental and Moral Philosophy, the only subject that directly touched the fundamentals of his Trade.
It is true that one of the accepted text books was Sully's "Outlines of Psychology with special reference to Education." (
The move to have Education made a definite University subject was naturally opposed on the grounds that the already strained finances of the Colleges could not reasonably bear the added cost. Mr George Hogben, who was then Inspector General of Schools, arranged for the Education Department to finance the scheme—the Principals of the four Training Colleges were appointed lecturers in Education, a syllabus arranged, and the new subject started in
So far "Education" had been confined to the "Pass" stage, but, having now attained full recognition for M.A. and Honours, much discussion arose as to the scope and limits of such a course entailing, as it did, alleged overlapping with old established subjects. Professor Sully had contended that an elementary knowledge of Psychology was the only pre-requisite to his course. If Education is a preparation for life it must touch on all its aspects and in turn be itself modified by them. Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Ethics, Art and History should therefore all play their part—the emphasis placed on such being determined largely by the outlook of the teacher. Critics did, and still may, dub this Education syllabus a Farrago. Such it might be, were it not dominated by the silver thread of its purpose—the understanding of the development of a human life through its environment, heredity, needs, aspirations and possibilities. The teaching profession in New Zealand is indeed fortunate in having the opportunities offered by such a syllabus, supplemented as it is by the assistance provided by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and its local Institutes. It is to be hoped that our teachers will avail themselves more of the help of this Council. Are we merely preaching a counsel of perfection? Many contend that the University has little to do with the training of the teacher, but surely of all professions, his is the one that should not be confined to the narrow limits of a purely technical institution! University life provides one in which the student rubs shoulders with the keenest minds in all professions. Both church and school may suffer grievously from a narrow outlook. This fact, I presume, accounts for the recent appointment of a barrister as head of Rugby school. University training is a means, not an end, and when the graduate goes out to his life's work, the school should naturally become his laboratory and his pupils material for intimate study and understanding. How many lives have
From the rustic quiet of a country town I look back on the bustling earnest life of my Alma Mater with considerable nostalgia, but realise that such an institution is essentially one for youth.
The thousands of students who have passed through Victoria University College in the past fifty years have amply justified the establishment of what was considered in the late nineteenth century to be a luxury scarcely justified at the time, but the Cinderella of the University Colleges has produced scholars, scientists, lawyers, and administrators who have more than held their own in the promotion of culture in the British Commonwealth.
To me the most vivid memory of the College is that of the opening days of the session for the year—with hundreds of eager young students ready to take large helpings of what an American writer many years ago described as the one thing in the world which you can take without anyone else being the poorer—education. In that phrase he struck the keynote of what appears to me to be the essential of life—no one can receive education without radiating that education to his fellows. We must put more into life than we take out of it, otherwise the nation will be bankrupt. Service to the community must go hand in hand with individual ambition—the highest ambition must be the community welfare.
This seems to be contrary to the ideas that are very widespread at the present time; the dominant idea of a large section of the community which makes the New Zealand nation, seems to be to take as much out of the pool and give as little back as possible.
If in a football team there are some who do not give of their best, the team must lose unless the remainder do more than their share. So it is in the nation. Unless we can develop the idea of doing our best, not for ourselves alone, but for the nation, the next generation will be poorer than the present; we shall be living on capital. This must be one of the most important missions of the University—to preach and practise the doctrine, "Give your best; don't be afraid that someone may make a little extra profit out of your extra effort."
A good fanner loves his land, and his aim is to see his farm constantly improving as a result of his work; at the end of his life his pride is that his farm is better as a result of what he had put into it. So it should be with the nation; we are all farmers, and our farm is our country. At the end of life—and life is short—let us ask ourselves the question: is New Zealand any better off for our having lived? If the answer is positive, we can close our eyes in peace.
In congratulating you on a successful career of fifty years since the foundation of the college, we take special pleasure in the fact that we know that it was the lot of our former alumni, John Rankin Brown and Hugh MacKenzie, to be present in your college at its birth and at its maturity: thus it has happened that the love of liberal studies and philosophy implanted in Scotsmen from old flourished anew among men separated from us by the whole earth.
Now, because in cherishing them you cherish this their alma mater, we find such pleasure that we feel not that we are sending this letter as it were to men unknown, or known only by hear-say, but that in a spirit of almost brotherly affection we are greeting friends and relations. Farewell.
It is indeed a privilege to send most cordial greetings and felicitations from the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology to Victoria University College in recognition of the occasion of its semi-centennial. Your own institution and this Institute are bound together not merely by a common purpose in the education of young people for service of a distinctive character, but also in a more intimate personal way because of our joint appreciation of the great service and our cherished memories of Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, whose name is an honoured one in each institution.
During his relatively brief but extremely brilliant career as an educational leader, Dr Maclaurin first served your college in New Zealand ably and nobly by helping to establish its principles and its ideals of operation, and later on the other side of the globe he had a distinguished and extraordinary career as the President and one of the great builders of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr Maclaurin, ably assisted by his charming wife, brought to America a breadth of view and freshness of outlook that were notable and invigorating, reflecting the energy and hopefulness of your splendid land. His soundness of learning, his judgment, his capacity for friendship, and his ability to influence and to command the service of other great men of character in his new endeavours stamped him as a man of great personality, extraordinary vision, and high executive ability. In yielding him to us in America your institution performed an international service for which we shall ever be grateful. Under his presidency the Massachusetts Institute of Technology not only greatly increased its physical plant and its financial and spiritual resources, but also broadened its influence in the scientific world and the respect in which it was held in lands beyond the sea.
In the dark days of the first World War when perplexing problems arose as to how college students should be trained to render the best service to their country, Dr Maclaurin's patriotism, knowledge of world needs, and capacity for leadership were again exhibited in his work in the establishment of the Student Army Training Corps in American colleges.
It is therefore with a deep and affectionate regard that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sends across the Pacific its greetings, its felicitations, and its best wishes that your College may have a long, happy, and ever expanding success in its service to human welfare, and in its many fields of educational endeavour.
In writing as one of the successors of Dr Maclaurin as the head of this great school for which he gave so much of his splendid energy and devotion, let me add my personal tribute to your great college, and my personal wish that it will enter upon its second half century with constantly growing success and increasing influence in education and human relationships.
It is a great pleasure to my College to send a message to the Victoria University College on the happy occasion of its Jubilee. We take much pride in remembering that a Fellow of St John's, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, was one of the four foundation Professors of the Victoria University College, linking us with your earliest days. He came to us after graduating at the University of New Zealand and had in Cambridge a career of high academical merit, both as mathematician and lawyer, becoming successively a Scholar, a MacMahon Law Student and a Fellow of the College, and winning distinction in the University as a Wrangler, a Smith's Prizeman, and a Yorke Prizeman.
The work of the foundation Professors was well done and we most cordially congratulate the Victoria University College on the achievements of its first fifty years, on the distinguished scholars whom it has educated and the high position to which it has attained. And with our congratulations we send out best wishes that the College may ever prosper and increase as a place of education, learning and research and continue as in the past to render high service to New Zealand and the Commonwealth.
The provost and fellows of Worcester College, Oxford, at their stated general meeting on
The provost and fellows remember the distinguished academic record of Sir John Rankine Brown, K.B.E., LL.D., M.A., sometime Scholar of Worcester College and are proud to think that he was the first Professor of Classics at Victoria University College and that he devoted his abilities to the promotion of Classical studies in New Zealand.
The provost and fellows therefore send to Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand, their congratulations on its Jubilee and their warm good wishes for its future fame and prosperity.
The university of glasgow has heard with great pleasure that in
The University recalls the intimate association of Scotland with the Dominion of New Zealand, and especially the part taken by graduates of the Scottish Universities in building the Colleges and University of New Zealand. Of that association, one fortunate example is the service of Sir John Rankine Brown, a Foundation Professor of the University College and its first Professor of Classics, who assumed his long duty in Wellington after a period of service in the University of Glasgow. The University rejoices also that the Victoria University College and its sister Colleges have amply paid the dues of their nurture, and that they have notably advanced the education, scholarship and science of the Dominion and of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
Sharing in the tradition which inspires Victoria University College and facing in its own land the same high tasks, the University of Glasgow congratulates the College on the achievement of the first fifty years, and wishes for it a long and happy and distinguished future in the promotion of good learning and of a wise and enlightened citizenship.
I send Victoria College, Wellington, my warm congratulations on the attainment of its Jubilee, and wish it a prosperous future in the long years ahead.
This message is not unconnected with the memory of the late Richard Maclaurin, who was one of the foundation professors of the College. We were contemporaries at Cambridge University, where we became close friends and where, from him, I first heard of Victoria College.
Subsequently, when I was in a position of some influence in South Africa, I did my best to entice him to South Africa, but the competing claims of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology carried the day, and he became President of that great Institution. He was a great figure in the scientific and University world, and added lustre to whatever institution he was connected with.
And with his memory I join that of another great New Zealand man with whom I formed a later friendship, Ernest Rutherford, one of the supermen of science. My recollection and friendship of these great men blend with the name of Victoria College, to which I send my respectful and sincere salutations on this milestone in its career.
If I may also speak on behalf of our old University of Cambridge and of the University of Cape Town, of both of which I have the honour to be Chancellor, I would add their congratulations and good wishes as well to Victoria College.
Neither Queen Victoria, who gave the infant college a name, nor Dick Seddon, who gave it "a local habitation," could fairly be described as bookish; and so it was natural enough that the first students should be left to stagger along without a Library. Something was done by enthusiastic teachers to fill the gap; but it was not until
The first librarian was a formidable figure. As he sat at his raised desk in the centre of the old reading room, wearing a neat grey suit and a clerical collar and a little black skull-cap and reading a Greek Testament or a copy of the Modern Churchman, he gave the place something of the air of a seminary. Few seminaries indeed can ever have been half so quiet; for movement was discouraged and "communication" of every sort—not simply speech—between reader and reader was strictly forbidden. Offenders against the rules were quietly invited to accompany the Librarian to his little room beside the main entrance and seldom emerged unshaken. By a combination of quiet persistance, and then brutality, the reign of quiet was established and preserved. In those circumstances only a serious student ever dreamt of entering the reading room, to take a book out was an act that required a certain counting of the cost, to fail to return it by the due date required a courage or a carelessness that set a man apart from ordinary peace-loving mortals. Even members of the teaching staff were made to toe the line.
No doubt it was overdone; but quietness is a good thing and hard to come by, and in this, as in other ways, Horace Ward served well the cause of learning. If he was irascible, he was also very conscientious, and worked hard and well for a very small salary. When he resigned, at the end of
Four years after the appointment of the present librarian, i.e., in
Up to
But we have had other benefactors, some of them very notable. From the libraries of A. R. Atkinson, D. E. Beaglehole, R. F. Blair, Sir Robert Stout and J. V. Turnbull we were able to select, in each case, between one and two thousand volumes in the fields of literature and history and politics; from W. J, McEldowney we received, in addition to valuable gifts in other fields, a very
We have done well; but, it is still only a beginning. We still need generous benefactions to carry us forward to the time when we shall be able to nourish those researches which are the life-blood not merely of any great university but of any great community.
At the end of that brief autobiography in which he describes the founding of the great library at Oxford that bears his name, Sir Thomas Bodley says, "I found myself furnished in a competent proportion of such fower kindes of aydes as, unless I had them all, there was no hope of good successe: for without some kinde of knowledge, as well in the learned and moderne tongues as in the sundry other sorts of scholasticall literature, with some purse habilitie to go through with the Charge, without very great store of honourable friends to further the designe, and without speciall good leasure to follow such a work, it could but have proved a vayne attempt and inconsiderate." Well, however it may be with the other three, we shall need a "great store of honourable friends," and I take this opportunity to appeal for them.
May 1 suggest that old students should help—as, for example, our old friend W. J. McEIdowney has helped and continues to help us—along the line of their special interests. Some few will be able to help us in a large way, by gifts of special collections; but many a man or woman will be able to help us in a small way, by giving us a single copy of a really good book or by paying a subscription of a single periodical. When I was in the United States, a good many years ago, I spent a morning with Mr Andrew Keogh in that stupendous library of Yale University; and I was particularly impressed with his story of the way in which old students of the university had helped to improve the collections of books. The building no doubt was the gift of a millionaire, but all over the United States there were old students who had made it their business to watch over a small or a large section of the library and to help in its extension. Might it not be so with us? We have begun well; is there any reason why we should not go on to become the Bodleian or the Yale of New Zealand?
A lectureship in Music was established in
To the question, why do you want to study music at the University? students usually give one of these answers: they want a unit for their B.A., they want to know something about harmony and counterpoint, they want to establish themselves in their jobs at the N.B.S.; and occasionally one nearly says because I like music, and is too reticent to say it.
Something that we can do for him is to give him as good a training in his craft as we can, to show him that technique, as a recent writer has put it, "can be studied only in terms of the period under discussion, that what is 'wrong' for one period may be 'right' for another." This means of course that he had better acquaint himself with as much music as he can; that he had better sound for himself bar 9 of the Andante of Mozart's Piano Concerto K.488 and recognise what Mozart is doing, than lard his work with Neapolitan sixths mugged up out of a text-book.
It is useful, therefore, to have as much music
Dido and Aeneas, of Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, of Vaughan Williams' Songs to be Sung in Time of War, of Bach's Sacred Songs have been given; weekly mid-day programmes have included works by 20th century composers, Berg, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Copland, and Bach's 48.
The Chancellor, Sir David Smith, in a recent address, quoted Professor John Macmurray's remark that "The primary function of universities is to act as cultural centres in our civilization." Students at Cambridge have the services in the College Chapels, they can enjoy string quartets brought down from London, they live in a tradition of performances of music. Perhaps we shall have to learn to be patrons, to be able to call on a string quartet so that our students can hear regularly the quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, and the finest chamber music.
The origins of Weir House are shrouded in mystery and financial wrangling. The mystery begins with the founder himself. No-one seems to have known who he was, the nature of his con-nection with the College, and just why he should have left so much money to found a residential hostel. In
We may well ask, what has happened during the 16 years of its existence? We may ask, but we may not expect an answer. The full history would be at least the subject for a Master's thesis; less complicated records do not exist. Since its foundation, the House has printed (of recent years cyclostyled) an annual house magazine, a rather paltry sheet which struck an uneasy mean between the alternating high endeavour and flat whimsy of a secondary school publication, and the more determined cultural aim of the usual University annual. From the file of these magazines we may (if we choose) reconstruct a picture, not on the nature of Weir House residents, but of their own glorified view of themselves.
In such biased sources as these, the typical Weir House resident appears as a somewhat gargantuan figure—a Paul Bunyan translated from the American backwoods to an antipodean campus. He is predominantly a creature of great appetite—he attacks food, alcohol and women with an equal (perhaps an identical) gusto. The chronicle of complaints about the food reads like the plaint of a strong man deprived of the meat and the bread his muscles demand. The tales of alcoholic orgies
Winners Senior Championship. 'After the war, experience was blended with youth, dash with experience, in perfect ratio'
(From right to left): R. B. Burke(Capt.), O. S. Meads, A. D. MacLennan, W. P. M. martin, D. S. Goodwin, (Vice-Capt.) R. W. Berry, J. P. Murphy, R. T. Shannon, M. F. Radich, H. E. M. Greig, J. A. L. Bennett, R. P. Hansen, R. Jacob, R. E. barraclough, A. S. Macleod.
remind one of nothing so much as the rye-soaked saloons of the Western film. The incidents of sexual licence presuppose residents equipped with the insinuating grace of Don Juan, the opportunities of Solomon, and the potency of an Olympian god founding new nations. Against this vision, we must place the disarming reminder of the magazine editor of
That is one aspect of the mental life of Weir revealed by the magazines—a thoroughly under-standable tendency to self-glorification. Another may be viewed through the medium of literary style. This seems always to have been characterised by an attempt to find novelty by using cliches as if they were oven-fresh. It is a style which has two advantages—it catches the esoteric (who himself probably used such a style) by revealing to him a method with which he is thoroughly familiar; it draws the philistine by writing to him in phrases which anyone over the age of five would be familiar with. (A great advantage this latter one, for not a few House residents have never got beyond the age of five in their literary appreciation, which is perhaps to be expected in a College which caters so blatantly for the professional classes.) Thus, a Sports Post—e.g., "The play was generally hard and keen, but at times scrappy, for a high wind made it difficult to throw the ball about ..." But the flippant cliche is the characteristic of Weir House prose; the dull reportage of the football match might be written by any near-illiterate inside or outside the University. A style continuously practised for a number of years usually finds an exponent who transforms it into an art. The master of the medium arose in Weir during the glorious years
These arbitrarily selected examples of the mind of Weir House would show it to be a thing of glass, fitful and rather worthless. There is of course more solid achievement. One could point to the high percentage of exam, passes, the record of graduates, scholarship winners, and first-class honours students. One could count the number of ex-residents at present studying overseas. These figures would show that Weir has in its brief existence been the abode of people who have studied seriously and successfully. A thing which is more important, but which couldn't be proved by statistics, is that the House has contained a large number of people acutely conscious of the broader aspects of their subjects, actively interesting them-selves (and in no dilletante way) with religion, philosophy, poetry, and all the questions of society. Within the present writer's memory at least there has been thought and discussion upon these topics carried out at a higher level than he has been acquainted with in the College as a whole. There has at times been a totally adult approach taken by a good number of the residents to matters which are characteristically the butt of adolescent wit. And that on its own is no mean achievement; it prevents Weir from being a mere boarding house with rather better accommodation than is usual.
The year of Jubilee for Victoria University College is also one of celebration for the V.U.C. Student Christian Movement, for, several months before the College was officially opened, in January of that year, a group of intending students met with W. H. Salmon of Yale University, a travelling secretary of the World's Student Christian Federation, and decided to form a "Christian Union," as local branches of the S.C.M. were for many years known. In the life of the Movement over the succeeding half century, there have been several major trends of thought, but none more sharply differing than the change of emphasis over the last twenty-five years. In the twenties the S.C.M. shared the general "Liberal" point of view. Today, Liberalism is no longer regarded as an effective Christian standpoint. At that time, ethical, moral, social and economic problems occupied the foreground of S.C.M. thought and discussion. The "practical application of Christian principles" to these problems was the great concern, and little interest was directed to the nature of Christian belief.
Dogma was shunned, and at all costs the Christian must avoid being intolerant—after all, every man was entitled to his own view. The Bible, interpreted in the light of the current "modernist" view, was regarded as a collection in the Old Testament, of interesting, but not altogether reliable stories of primitive peoples, and in the New Testament as the main source of knowledge of the Jesus of History, the Prophet of the Brotherhood of Man, our Great Moral Example. Man was regarded as essentially good, provided he had grown up in an enlightened environment, and sin was not thought of as a dynamic force. Thus the imminent dawn of a better world was confidently hoped for, its possibility depending upon the enthusiasm of men of good will for the great moral principles of Jesus of Nazareth.
But this genial mood was to change. With the thirties came sobering years of economic depression while in Europe, in Germany itself, the very centre of the Enlightenment, new and disturbing totali-tarian forces emerged. From the same continent Karl Barth's theology of militant orthodoxy in direct opposition to the easy optimism and rationalism of the previous decade began to gain ground among the intellectuals of the Movement. Then came the War, the second World War within a generation, and in Nazi Germany and in the occupied countries students, both men and women, went to concentration camp and death because of the role of the S.C.M. in the Resistance.
Today, in the face of the despair of the vanquished and the gloom of the victors, in a world of mass movements in which the significance of the concrete human person steadily decreases, in a world split into two vast opposed camps so that issues riddled with complexities are presented in blacks and whites, the S.C.M. is called to "Christian obedience." That is its members are called to a thorough understanding of Biblical thought and doctrine, that whatever eventuates they may know where they stand and why they stand both personally and politically in order that they may be able to act deliberately and decisively out of Christian conviction and say "I can no other."
The S.C.M. member is now no longer shy of dogmatics and systematic theology. The Bible is for him the Word of God to be heard and to be obeyed "existentially." He has an important role in the Ecumenical Movement. "Social problems" do not occupy a large part of his discussion, while his interest is great in the theological basis of Community. Believing the corporate nature of the Church to be essential to a full Christian life, he must be sharply critical of any political theory which assumes religion to be a private and individual concern, and demands a total conformity to Party directions. He realises the urgent need of responsible student citizenship, and for that reason he is prepared to work for the College, and to stand for its offices. He is prepared to declare beyond the College walls the faith by which he lives, and he desires to see the gap between the university and the community bridged. To this end forty-two members of V.U.C.S.C.M. made time during the recent long vacation to take part in a week's mission of goodwill to a Wellington provincial town.
He admires the zeal of his Liberal predecessor for a better society, but cannot endorse his cure that it only depends on ourselves. The events of our day have re-taught the Christian a hard lesson: that left to himself man does not naturally follow the good, and that man will be saved from the inevitable chaos of his radical personal and national egocentricity only by singlehearted worship and service of a God, Who is both God of Love and Lord of History, who calls men not to lofty ideals and noble sentiments, but to sober obedience, in whom alone our existence has purpose, and who can turn even the wrath of man to his glory.
Victoria college had been in existence for six years before the foundation stone of the main portion of the present building was laid—to the accompaniment of an Ode which, expecting rather too much of Pallas, bade her 'clear face' to
'Lift to our lips the cup wherein is mixed
The potency of Knowledge, Science, Truth.'
(The more cultural faculties will appreciate the segregation of Science from Knowledge and Truth.)
The foundation stone of the Dramatic Club, however, was then no more than a series of scattered pebbles. True, there had been one or two plays during the second halves of concerts. There was already a habit, swiftly approaching a tradition, of executing bawdy riots known as Annual Capping Carnivals. Yet these activities were by no means integrated within the organisation of a distinct Club. As the need arose—apparently when a harassed social organiser thought that a play would fill out the evening—then a play would be presented.
It must not be inferred that the plays were no more than elevated charades. One of the first recorded presentations was Horace at Athens (Trevelyan) produced in
In Rosencrantz and Guitdenstem was played. This was well received by the 'Varsity audience. It was memorable particularly for the dramatic collapse of a rabbit-skin 'arras' (this, of course, drew cries of "' ow 'arassing" from the pun-conscious audience), which left the promptress exposed to public view. Just how exposed she was is unrecorded. Hamlet was left standing outside the front curtain when it fell later, but he probably had the presence of mind to commit suicide and clear the stage completely.
In
Our attention is rudely attracted to a full-page advertisement in the The Spike headed "Coo-ee" and artfully drawn in a series of alliterations, among which we are told to attend "the Sydney Street Schoolroom Students' Studiously Soniferous Side-Splitting Soiree, with a Soul-Satisfying Supper." Here a work known as 'Sarah's Young Man' was staged. Records disclose that this early milestone on the Great White Way was no more than a bawdy bedlam of backstage bucolics, incidental to the current Capping Ceremony.
For the first time, however, a criticism of Victoria drama appeared in The Spike after the execution of this delicate vignette. The phrases used by the writer: "convincingly displayed"; "carried out in a most natural manner their amorous roles "—give us a clue to the origin of the style and analytical approach of a drama critic who appears, to this day, in a Wellington morning paper. It is indeed refreshing, in the mad bustle of
The records of The Spike a single line devoted to drama, as distinct from the cloddish antics of the Capping Carnival enthusiasts: "Mr and Mrs Newton gave a clever and amusing sketch "—at a concert in the Sydney Street Schoolroom.
In
The nights of the 8th and 9th brought a farce by the name of Facing the Music to the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall, presented by Victoria students. The plot was said to be 'thicker than molasses' but—as is the way with molasses—was 'rapidly unravelled.'
There was still no organised Drama Club. The lack of a Drama Club was not even bemoaned.
A writer in the The Spike described the play-going public of New Zealand as "not necessarily meritorious in drama "—which does not say much for drama. "The supply of drama
Another commentator in
Still, in that year, the only recorded stage performance given by Victoria students was the Extrav—Boadicea. In the last act, the audience not only witnessed the queen being flogged by the brutal Roman soldiery, but also saw (with their own eyes, no doubt) the marks. This intriguing touch of realism can be attributed only to the licence of these primitive times—for decollete dresses and short skirts were not in vogue then, we imagine. The acting was apparently of a high order, though the Evening Post was perspicacious enough to point out that "an umbrella in the time of Caesar was a gross anachronism."
It seems that the Reading Circle had strutted its hour by
By
In Gentle Gertrude, or Drowned and Drugged in Digbeth was adjudged "the most pleasing thing of its kind ever attempted by Victoria College amateurs." By that time, the play readings of the Debating Club had been temporarily shelved, it seems, although all the activities of other clubs were flourishing—with the possible exception of the Glee Club, which was at last obliged to seek an audience at the Porirua Mental Hospital.
In
Toward the end of
In
A member of the Debating Society, writing in
Even as he wrote, the College was charged with expectancy—although it was probably unaware of it. Toward the end of
The Dramatic Club was formed with the object of "discovering the considerable amount of histrionic talent that was lying latent in the students." The originators were justified in propounding their purpose so elusively. Until the club was a going concern, it was impossible to formulate definite plans.
The initial activities were just as tentative. Only readings were attempted. Yet, in the first report in The Spike, it was already stated that member-ship had been limited to fifty and that vacancies were to be filled by application, as they occurred.
Members met once a week (on Tuesday evenings) in the Gym. Unfortunately, there seems to be no record of the officers of the Club at that time.
Some of the readings were held in public, and the proceeds of the box office devoted to the expenses of the Plunket Medal contest; also to the travelling costs of the Easter Tournament delegates.
At the first committee meeting, it was decided to arrange lectures on authors, illustrated by the reading of typical passages.
By
It was then clear to the officers that "the Club's work is to provide mind-brightening, rather than mind-furnishing; amusement rather than erudition.
The Younger Generation was performed in Captain Brassbound's Conversion (perhaps he was weaned away from his box) was read.
At the end of the year the Club looked back on "a record of good performance, sound finance and, magis auro desideranda, an enthusiastic personnel." The strange words are Latin, meaning "a little more audibility would be desirable."
In The Spike article as a means of drawing us out of our isolation and "into touch with the spirit of our age"; of stimulating our imagination and intellect; and of giving the actor an escape from the confines of his individuality. In the same work, appreciation was accorded to Mr A. W. Newton, his sister and Mr H. E. Nicholls, who were the original enthusiasts in the early years of drama at Victoria.
What of the next two years? The pages of the Club's past do not seem to have been heavily thumbed during that period. In fact, it was only in
In To Have the Honour (A. A. Milne). By the end of
The Dark Angel and Rope. Here at last was meat for the teeth of the Club and the College—raw meat, some of it. This year, the Club proved itself capable of a maturity worthy of University activities, with a wide and well-selected group of plays. The Dark Angel (Trevelyan) was "an outstanding success and voted by the dramatic critics as the best 'Varsity production." Rope (Hamilton) had some technical defects—mainly over-modesty in unleashing the emotions—but one critic said of it:
"As an amateur show it was first-class and no amateur has a right to expect more."
After the dizzy successes of this brief Golden Age in the career of the Club, there was a decline in the quality of its performances and in support. The finances ebbed in The Blind Crowder by E. L. Palmer (an ex-Varsity student). St. J. Ervine's The Ship and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler were also presented.
In God Made Two Trees. This was described as successful.
In
However, it was in
Laburnum Grove (Priestley) and Cocktail Party (a swift Revue)—were presented at Varsity to enthusiastic audiences; four plays were read; a steel track for the draw curtains was provided, and the Club wound up the year "in an excellent financial position." The Committee debated whether or not to descend on the Wellington public with a play, but decided that it was questionable whether the public (or the student body for that matter) wanted to be improved. "Experience has taught us a bitter lesson. The pill has to be thickly coated before they can be persuaded to so much as look at it."
The Revue that year was a succes fou, it appears. Mr D. G. Edwards was responsible for its efficient management. There have been, in the Club's history, Revues and revues. It seems that, given an organiser assiduous in ensuring swift continuity and mature selection of items, they have been very popular. The present Club could give some thought to Revues as sure box-office successes—compensating, perhaps, for other productions which yield cultural rather than financial profit.
The next year, Mr Leo Du Chateau—not a member of the Club—produced Coward's Hay
Fever. The cast gave a remarkably high standard of performance. Similar praise was accorded the players (almost entirely new members) who presented Journey's End.
Again, the Revue was found to be a profitable source of revenue.
Still, with some exceptions, the main body of students was not supporting the Club to the extent it deserved.
By
At the end of
The zenith was passed in Harvest in the North by James Hodson (produced by Don. Priestley), which ran three nights. The cast included Beatrice Hutchinson, Dennis Hartley and John McCreary.
Her Father's Pride, or Virtue Shines Brighter Than Gold, was staged. Also, Victoria gained third place in the inter-University College Drama Festival which was inaugurated that year. It is not recorded whether more than three Universities competed.
But most of the experienced members had been lost. A sorry picture was painted for Where s Thai Bomb? was interrupted by an air-raid warning.
It was reported that the Club was still unbowed by the bludgeonings of chance, but it was feared that it would soon be "tottering to its dismal grave."
The Club dragged into
The Club at last began to creep up to its former glory in Anna Christie (O'Neill), with Dick Campion and Edith Hannah (later Mrs Campion) received resounding praise. The staging was excellent, considering the space and materials available. The scenery gave little more than an impression, and for that reason was highly effective. tragedy was narrowly averted when Huddy Williamson sucked instead of blowing into the bottle of chemicals which produced the eerie fog. The general effect, he reported, was no worse than that of a certain brand of synthetic gin.
In Late Christopher Bean was to be read one night, but in the absence of an audience, a seance was held instead, among the members of the cast. A bag of mixed sketches, a one-act evening and a raggled revue completed the year's doings.
The presentation of Bridie's Mr Bolfrey was a promising start in Ghosts, the other major production, was adequately performed, though without much controlled emotion or co-ordination. Ghosts was too ambitious for the Club at that stage. It had its moments, but it did not hang together. It was unconvincing, Hallo, Out There (O'Neill) was Victoria's entry in the British Drama League Competition. Absolute simplicity of set and lighting—a single beam from the ceiling creating a stark circle of light in the centre of the darkened stage—contributed much to the power and intensity of the play.
Lack of support, of stage facilities and properties, of storage space and of a proper library were the chief limiting factors in
The Constitution of the Club was revised in
The Infernal Machine. The hall and stage were too large; the weather was at times shocking. With one or two exceptions, the cast was not sufficiently experienced to create an outstanding production. In spite of the conditions, however, a good enough job was done. It deserved greater support than it received.
I Have Been Here Before (Priestley), produced in She Stoops to Conquer (Goldsmith), which, from preliminary reports, promises to be outstanding.
Here we leave the history—at a point where the Club has made good progress since the end of the war. The plays have been mainly well-selected—although perhaps ambitious—but actual performances have seldom been above average.
What can we learn from the history of the Club? The first lesson is simple. It is probably fair to say that—except in the pre-war Golden Age and, in some instances, in the post-war revival—not enough attention has been given to the physical and mental grind necessary for a satisfactory polish. In other words, student-producers have not troubled, in many instances, to analyse the fundamental spirit of the play; to comprehend each character as a developing entity; to discern the conflicts and harmonies between the characters; to take each line and decide on tone, emphasis and accompanying movement; to create an ebb and flow of emotion. Many actors do not go far beyond the learning of their lines and a perfunctory attention to the personality of the individual they are trying to portray. Their study of techniques is inadequate. When lectures on movements, make-up, authors, have been given, few members have bothered to attend. Yet many members seriously consider themselves qualified to seek parts in such difficult plays as Ghosts or Man and Superman.
It is not expecting too much of University students to take an active interest in lectures on the techniques of the stage; to participate in readings for the sake of understanding the plays, getting to know the characters and their interplay, and even learning to speak the parts correctly. Until the elementary period of learning has been undertaken by a member of the Club, he should not attempt to take part in difficult plays.
This first lesson is, we have said, simple and perhaps obvious. Yet it is clear that the basic training of producers and actors is inadequate. The Club is clearly limited as to its scenery, lighting effects, and other stage properties, but there need be no obstacle to greater polish in production and acting.
This leads to a further suggestion. Undoubtedly, it is desirable that plays should be produced by Club members, if possible. At the present time, however, it seems that there are few Victoria students who can do justice to production. Until there are students who have sufficient stage experience to qualify as producers, persons from outside the University should be asked to produce. There are at least half a dozen ex-Varsity men and women in Wellington who could be approached. Let a member of the Club assist in the production by all means. That is the ideal method of training. But the Club should be wary of looking at, say, the committee members (no offence to the present officers intended) and, by a process of elimination—or reductio ad absurdum—finding someone who is willing to produce. It would be better to postpone the play until a suitable producer can be found.
Some students have proved themselves excellent producers in the past; but these have been exceptional, rather than usual.
From time to time, concern has been felt at the lack of support from members. One obvious solution is to encourage new members to step quickly into active participation. Freshers have often been discouraged at an early stage by neglect. They should be drawn into play readings as soon as they join. That should be the first task of the Committee. Classes in elementary technique should be held, and it should not be long before freshers have simple parts in one-act plays.
There is, of course, the dilemma of stimulating the immediate interest of new members, but at the same time confining parts in serious productions to experienced actors. One-act plays are probably best for freshers, provided they are produced by experienced persons. Past evenings of one-act plays have often been badly treated, mainly by reason of insufficient care in production. Many of them have been no more than casual entertainment for the audiences. As serious media for training new members, their worth has been negligible.
The Club should not confine itself to the more weighty productions. Well-organised Revues before the war were, as pointed out earlier, an excellent source of revenue—particularly if followed by dances. Substantial profits from this form of cultural prostitution are not so tainted that they cannot be used in financing plays of high standard, where the costs of production would otherwise bar their presentation by the Club.
These suggestions are based chiefly on the post-war experience of the Club. Only some of the defects may have been present at any one time.
So much for the debit side of the sheet. On the credit side there have been some productions which can be classed as outstanding; many, as above average. Anna Christie; Mr Bolfrey; Hallo, Out There; The Infernal Machine, to select a few recent examples, have demonstrated the potentialities of the Club. Contending against the difficulties of a ridiculously small stage; lack of properties and storage space; inadequate stage equipment and, above all, the necessity of spending a great deal of time on preparation (which most students can ill-afford), the Club has achieved almost incredible results at times.
A University Dramatic Club has the unique opportunity of playing to an apparently intelligent audience. The Club has had the courage to present difficult and stimulating plays, and when these have been carefully studied and produced the enthusiastic response has not been lacking. It is now the
So far the earnest seekers after a native New Zealand literature have quite overlooked the Extravaganza. Yet, in its spontaneity and its unselfconscious expression of the New Zealander's interest in politics and all the strong things in life about him, it is as much an expression of a New Zealander's view of life as the plays of Aristophanes were of the Athenian outlook.
Because of its composite origin, Extrav. is a particularly valuable manifestation of local art. There are often many writers of a Wellington Extravaganza, to say nothing of interpolations made by the cast and the contribution to the total effect made by the costume designers, "prop"-men and others. It is directly a social work of art like the ballads and sagas of a more coherent age.
Unlike most New Zealand literature of today, Extrav. is distinctly local and regional. The comparatively adult revels of Auckland, for example, are quite different from the uninhibited Saturnalia of Wellington.
It may be objected that Extrav. has not the permanence of Aristophanes or W. S. Gilbert. True, the Extravs. survive mainly by oral tradition, but survive they do in the Orongorongos and backstage at subsequent Extravs. When wartime brought into the open, at least in army camps, much balladry that had led an underground existence during peacetime, Rollo the Ravaging Roman began to be heard in camp-concerts along with other traditional material.
However, it may be interesting to glance back over the years, so, with our Time Machine in reverse, off we go—
Back in Students' Carnival, the precursor of Cappicades yet unborn. In this we read that Diploma Day is Wednesday, 24th June, and a Carnival is to be held in the Sydney Street Schoolroom at which the whole thirteen graduates will be capped! On the front cover we are also informed that New Laid Eggs may be obtained from the Fresh Food and Ice Company, and that Tonkin's Linseed Emulsion is useful for your cough. (Sold Everywhere.)
Peeping inside, we find the programme from which a few selections would not go amiss:
The Victoria College Song No. 1, and Maori Haka. Pianoforte Solo, Caprice Espagnol—Mr Grauhauf. Solo, Bedouin Love Song—Mr H. P. Richmond. Plantation Song, De Lecture (apparently the singer was too bashful to give his name).
Now for Part 2, the beginning of Extrav. This appears to me to be worth reproducing in full.
The Fresh Food and Ice Company is with us again on this page, this time extolling the virtues of their Prime Table Poultry! Happy days! People paying good money to the Capping Book Committee to advertise eggs for sale!
Then the farce disappears from the scene until Munchums, or The Origin of Genus, written by Messrs F. A. de la Mare, S. S. McKenzie and S. Eichelbaum. Unfortunately, no trace of this noble script has yet been found. In Tableau 3, the Historic Age, is an item worth noticing:
The words have been preserved for posterity, so herewith a selection:
(Apparently the Fresh Food and Ice Co. have found other methods of bringing their goods before the public as Myrtle Grove Cigarettes appear to have taken their place on the front cover.)
In travelling on to Reform or The Metamorphosis of the Evoluters we note:
In
Now, strangely enough, in Wumpty Dumpty with a distinguished cast featuring Messrs Caddick, Hall-Jones and Sievwright.
By
At the end of World War I, the formalized cover returns. A full-length show is presented in the Town Hall, Der Tag, or The Path of Progress, with a distinguished cast including the following:
Now we come to the modern era. The Dogs, featuring such well-known players as P. Martin-Smith, S. A. Wiren, and many others. This auspicious move was celebrated by another return to the art cover in colour.
Now, on to the thirties. B B in Willum the Conk in Coax and Hoax ( 1932), Murder in the Common Room (
The late nineteen thirties produced another set of brilliant and prolific script writers—the Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Ron Meek. Of the Pillars' efforts the best are probably Hell's Bells (The Book of Bob (Adam in Wonderland (The Voice, Mr W. S. Austin.
Then come John Carrad's delightful variety shows with their inconsequential nonsense and their catchy songs, Daze Bay Nights, Port Nick Iniquity and The Dinkum Oil.
The last decade of the Extravaganza is dominated by the influence of Ron Meek. Meek admired Aristophanes and W. S. Gilbert and combined something of the talents of these figures in his writing. He brought to his art intellectual brilliance of the highest order and the highly allegorical, satirical and witty plot has tended to become standard. Meek's influence is plainly seen in the
Intellectual brilliance was perhaps the "fatal flaw" in Meek as an Extrav. writer. Sometimes the allegory becomes strained to breaking-point. The Cinderella scene in Centennial Scandals (
This was an extreme case, but it may be doubted whether brilliant lyrics are effective on the stage. It is not easy to follow an argument through a catchy tune.
In another mood, however, Meek's wit found outlet in exuberant satire. The "two grey mares" of
In
Meek has now left New Zealand and memories of his successes are in the minds of present scriptwriters. This is not altogether good as he was a difficult writer to imitate. His scripts had unity of tone in a subtle but recognisable intellectual clarity rather than in a rich imagination. Missing this, imitations could be lifeless and incoherent. This is particularly likely where several writers combine to do a script.
There are many possibilities for future development. Extrav. may never be as witty as in
Perhaps some (so far) mute, inglorious Meek lolls in the common-room as we write, ready any minute to burst into script. There's room for him.
'Bored at 24 is a common complaint of our day. For all such tired young people the cure is editorship. There is a new and different thrill each time one uses the editorial "we" with becoming gravity. So, with a sense of responsibility, we pen the following original effort . . .'
This was the beginning of student journalism at Victoria College—the opening lines of the editorial in the first issue of Smad,
In Smad was replaced by Salient, whose first editorial began:
'Smad is dead. With it has gone the policy that guided it for several years.
The change has been made not because that policy was undesirable, but because it was felt the spirit of the times demanded than any suggestion of Olympian grandeur or academic isolation from the affairs of the world should be dropped and should be replaced by a policy which aims firstly to link the University more closely to the realities of the world; and secondly to comment upon, rather than report in narrative style, the activities of college clubs.
Elsewhere in this issue will be found an expression of the opinion that students are not qualified to hold political opinions. The whole policy of this paper is founded on a diametrically opposite view.'
These two editorials are peculiarly typical of the journals they introduced. Smad was a College paper, and most of its contributors did not concern themselves with anything outside the day to day activities of students in their courses and recreations. It reported and exhorted, but did not criticise. Salient, in its eleven years of publication, has maintained an interest in the wider issues that affect the lives of students. Derek Freeman,
Up to The Spike was published twice a year. At the Students' Association Annual General Meeting in that year, it was decided that The Spike should become an annual review, and that a magazine, Smad, should be published six times a year. The Spike which appeared in The Spike's literary and intellectual standards showed that the change was in the interests of both publications.
Smad took its name from the first letters of the words of the College motto, and its first editor, R. J. Reardon, wrote: 'It will be a University publication, devoted to the everyday life that we all know . . . Three things will be necessary to arouse your interest. First, a loyalty to College, secondly, a paper devoted to College, and lastly, contributions from students.'
The first years of Smad, during the depression, saw frequent attacks on academic freedom, and the editor defined his attitude to that question in the first issue:
'In late years there has been a tendency to curtail and restrict the natural rights of University students.
This is more the outcome of ignorance of student thought and the student mind, than of any feeling of actual hostility. Our aim must be to break down that barrier of misunderstanding, whilst at the same time preserving our right to guard, with all our efforts, those student rights which appear to be slipping into the background.'
From Smad was printed in magazine form. Its typographical standard was not high, except in
On Smad made its first reference to a question which has not yet been closed:
'It would be superfluous to traverse the manifold arguments in favour of a new building as long as the present dismal erection constitutes so useless a drain on the student revenue. If we set ourselves to raise a definite sum and to have a new building not later than
In Smad was 500. In Salient was only 800.
It appears that those students who were able to attend the University in spite of the depression were not unduly concerned about it. The pages of Smad were full of domestic gossip, and argumentative correspondence about the 'shock tactics' of the Scm, but in two years the depression is hardly mentioned. When Signor Fornichella gave a talk at the College on Fascism, the following statement was printed without comment:
'Fascism stands for law and order, peace at home and abroad . . . Mussolini represents democracy in the highest sense of the word.'
In Smad began boldly with a plea for serious thought on the issues between Christian and atheist, capitalist and communist, but soon settled down comfortably into the old routine of gossip and introspection. There is even an attempt to justify the sending down for a year of the editor of Critic by the Ou Council, for printing seditious material. An unsigned article states that 'as university students we have contracted away part of our powers of self government so far as they relate to academic life.'
In the same year the executive placed a ban on liquor at student dances.
In
'Attacks by certain public bodies and private citizens on Victoria College students generally, accusing them of unpatriotism and other equally harsh charges, and of particular admiration for the Soviet State in all its workings, show how far some people lose their sense of proportion in matters.'
In Smad states that 'such inquiry disproved the allegations made by correspondents in the daily press. Only last week at a meeting of the Court of Convocation, splendid support was given to present students in their efforts to preserve the right to academic freedom.'
Smad, make very interesting reading. The year before, The Spike had been withdrawn and reprinted, minus some 'indecent' and 'seditious' articles, and Smad joined in the chorus of protests.
In Smad became a weekly four-page newspaper 'to allow the discussion of current topics and recording of university activities to be maintained in a more interesting vein, hitherto quite impossible.'
In its new format, the paper diverged considerably from its original policy of 'a University publication, devoted to the everyday life that we all know.' There were articles on 'The Russian Mind and Communism' and 'The Economic Drive to War'; and a start was made on critical reporting of the activities of college clubs. One issue contained a full page of Capping photographs, and another a twelve point questionnaire on 'Would You Fight?'
In the following year the same policy was continued, and there were editorials on 'The Labour Party in Power,' 'What is a Degree?,' and 'Exporting Brains.' These two volumes, edited by J. C. White and R. C. Connell respectively, were Smad's best. Layout and headlines were of a high standard, and gossip was almost eliminated.
In
The different policy of Salient, which first appeared in Salient was a weekly, and not a week passed without the appearance of several provocative, well-written and well-informed articles. Writers like Bonk Scotney (editor '38), Derek Freeman (editor '39), and Ron Meek were as prolific as they were stringent. Interviewing celebrities was part of the new policy. Those interviewed in Salient's treatment of the comic-opera count caused some dismay at the time, but subsequent events justified
Vuc had won the Easter Tournament, the standard of play was no higher than in previous years.
The same high standard was maintained in
At the Annual General Meeting that year, Salient was attacked strongly, mainly on the grounds that the views it was putting forward were not those of the students who should be its readers, and a guest editor, Mr W. S. Mitchell, was appointed for two issues. From reading these two issues, one gets the impression that his policy was similar, but that his views were different.
The war hit Salient early. It was thought likely in Salient of just those subjects which were most urgent at the time, so for one year it became a cyclostyled journal. The idea did not succeed. A short story, ' There's a war on ...' provoked the fury of the Olympians, and no further issues appeared until some members of the Executive had given an undertaking to the Prime Minister that they would see that no more seditious material was published. Only eight issues appeared that year, and half of them did not contain the unfettered views of the writers.
In Salient became a printed newspaper once more, smaller than before the war, but making a desperate attempt to maintain the standard. Much good work was done this year, and in succeeding years, in keeping students in the forces in touch with what was going on at the College, and to a certain extent with one another, by careful attention to club reporting and by printing news and letters from students overseas.
Salient found it hard to believe that the university system was properly geared for helping the war effort, and were more critical than usual of the syllabus and lecture system. Students were taking life more seriously, and the following extract from Cecil Crompton's editorial on ' University and the War' probably reflected the consensus of opinion:
'Anti-fascist speeches alone will not keep the Japanese away—where trained and spirited defence will. Many students are serving in the armed forces, at home and overseas, but that does not excuse us from taking our part. There are men in the Eps who should be in the Home Guard; there are women who imagine they are too busy to devote one evening a week to the Eps.'
In Salient, with the co-operation of the Executive, took the lead in organizing student work-days for Patriotic Funds and a Liberty Loan campaign in the College. Editorials exhorted students to swot harder, to ' study for victory.' The standards of typography and reporting were improved once more, and a number of illustrations were used with good effect. A well known ex-student wrote to the editor congratulating her on the good job she was doing.
Audacious innovations in layout, headlining and reporting were a feature of Salient Salient met affable, fair-moustached Signalman Cyril, ex-Vuc, in the Terminus. Likes a pot, talks easily when drinking.' (interview with an escaped Pow); but the general effect was a greatly improved paper. The aim to make the paper brighter by the use of arresting headlines, good illustrations and snappy reporting was achieved, and by the time the war was over and ex-servicemen began to return to the College, Salient had returned to its pre-war brilliance, although it still lacked the sharp irony and ruthless logic of
In
Salient was in trouble again that year, but the editor cleverly turned the tables on his opponents by moving a vote of no confidence in the Stud. Ass. Secretary at the Annual General Meeting.
Troubled by shortage of space, the
'I am glad Salient is now ten. It has survived difficult times but appears to be a healthy specimen, constitutionally sound, so that it can reasonably look forward to further years of activity. I hope this proves
Vuc tradition. But should Salient ever fall behind the times, then it is to be hoped the students of the day will have the good sense to make another change and produce Salient's successor."
The second ten years began with a fight, in which Salient loyally took the side of a disgraced Executive, even producing an extra issue, cyclo-styled at midnight, to support its view. The year was made difficult by two changes in editorship, and a change to a cheaper but less satisfactory printer. As a result, it is hard to decide just what has been the editorial policy, and still harder to guess at what it is likely to be in the future. It seems safe to assume, however, that Vuc will continue to have publications which will preserve the ideal of the first editor of Smad, when he said:
and
Though it is but seven years old, and therefore one of the younger societies at Victoria, the Catholic Students' Guild has associations which go back much further.
In
The procedure adopted at the meetings has been for two students to offer papers on a set subject, which is subsequently discussed. While topical questions have provoked many willing exchanges, the Guild has, not surprisingly, returned again and again to an analysis of such fundamental subjects as The Church and Science, Evolution, Dialectical Materialism, The Meaning of Education, and The Social Teaching of the Church. From these discussions has come the realization of the need for an integrating principle of human knowledge, such as is found in the study of scholastic metaphysics.
These meetings have on the whole been well attended, and visitors have been most welcome, bringing, as they do, differing attitudes to many problems. In
Social activity has been a feature of Guild life: annual dances and socials to welcome new students have been well attended and have provided variety in the year's programme. These, like most of the gatherings, have been held at St Patrick's College on Sunday evenings, the most suitable of the few times at which a group of both full-time and part-time students can meet. In St Patrick's the Guild has a constant friend, helper and counsellor, and to its rectors and the chaplain, the Rev Father F. Durning, S.M., much is owed.
In Pax Romana, another stage in their work will be complete. Already the New Zealand Society has held two conferences and two congresses, from which has come much of value and enjoyment.
The Guild has been well served in its officers. The first president was Mr B. M. O'Connor, and his successors have been Messrs K. B. O'Brien, M. E. Casey, W. L. Hocquard and H. E. Connor. Miss Sheila Moriarty, who had a large part in the early formative work, was the first secretary, and has been succeeded by Messrs F. O'Kane, B. O'Leary, M. F. Mclntyre and P. F. Giles. It is noteworthy, too, that Mr K. B. O'Brien is vice-president of the University Catholic Society, New Zealand, while the Guild's committee has served two terms as its executive.
The dual character of the Guild as a university and religious group is brought out in the activities of members. Some have entered the ranks of the Catholic priesthood, while others have won distinction in academic life and as officials of student organizations. Perhaps the best-known field of activity has been oratory and debate, where the successes of members have included the Plunket and Bledisloe Medals and the Union Prize. The College Debating Society knows many members of the Guild among its most enthusiastic speakers.
During these seven years the aim has been to
Fides Quaerens Intellectum, while stimulating healthy criticism, and has provided beneficial and informative relaxation.
If the account to be true must mention the lack of interest of many who should both contribute and derive benefit, it must also record a hope for the future. The Guild is young among the clubs at Victoria, just as this College, despite her jubilarian air, is young among universities—both, however, may be said to make up for in vitality what they lack in venerability. The Guild looks forward to the foundation of a chair in scholastic philosophy in the College—and until then it will continue in its own way to serve the needs of those who are aware of the implications and value of Christian thought.
With a feeling of failure, I commenced writing this record of the activities of the Victoria University College Literary Societies over the last twenty-five years. It appeared that if the College had not failed, then at least we as students had done so, in an important aspect of student cultural life. Dramatic Societies seemed almost always to be flourishing and Debating Societies were even more so. Various political societies came and vanished, as the Anti-War Movement of
But upon further reflection I found that I was not so conscious of a paramount feeling of failure. Great apathy has to be overcome in literary matters, it is true. But it is overcome and Literary Societies are formed, again and yet again. It does not matter that all too soon they die again. They arise spontaneously when the need is greatest and in their short span they serve to aid the literary interests and expression of at least those students who most require their aid. When the material is lacking, they refuse to be forced into a continued existence and fade again into the past. I think that this is as it should be. Each Literary Society at Victoria College has been above all a student movement. That is the most important thing about it.
Commencing at the Silver Jubilee, we find that it was not until Phœnix. At this time emphasis was still upon active participation by members in reading papers, as well as upon visits by speakers from outside the University. Unfortunately, by
Typically, in
Some continuity of officers augured well for the second year of the Phoenix Club which was now called upon to serve in some part in place of the Free Discussions Club, at that period no longer functioning. However, despite further worthwhile activity by outside speakers, club members seemed to contribute little themselves, relying too much upon a willing committee, as so often has been the case. Nevertheless, competitions for original
In Salient flourished and perhaps absorbed all the attention of the talent available, so the Phoenix Club declined. Politics seemed then necessary to literature and art. It was hoped that the war would not immediately crush all cultural manifestations, but although The Spike and Salient continued to flourish mightily, overcoming censor-ship and other obstacles to a large degree, the Phoenix Club was doomed. The call of the Armed Services was also already becoming noticeable in the field of the arts. A brief and half-hearted attempt at recrudescence appeared in
Most hopeful feature of the whole history of V.U.C. Literary Societies has been the irrepressible spontaneous flowering of activity in recurring cycles, however irregular. Four years seems to be the greatest period through which the effort can be sustained, however inadequately, and the interval between resurrections is variable. For the rest of the war years and after, the creative fires still burned low, but in Broadsheet. While it was hoped that in the following year the Society might continue to fill so obvious a need in the cultural life of the College, the danger was foreseen that instead of widening its appeal, the Literary Society might concentrate its activities within the limits of an enthusiastic clique.
Although there was again some continuity of officers, what had been feared did in fact occur and the Literary Society degenerated into an organ serving the needs of the few rather than one carrying any richer influence into Varsity life as a whole. A periodical library had been formed, it is true, but of somewhat esoteric character that apparently was in the nature of caviare to the general reader. Public meetings were joylessly abandoned due to the difficulty of securing outside speakers, but the informal study groups continued with small but really attentive circles of members and did much good work. The New Zealand Poetry Group was improved by being widened to become the N.Z. Literature Group, and the Elizabethan Drama Group, after a late start, was so successful as to be merged with the Dramatic Club in
Broadsheet, after a flamboyant The First Placard of the Armadillan Absolutists, settled down to a useful existence, even if its appearance was not as frequent as had been hoped. However, its success was sufficient to warrant the organisation in
Most readers of this magazine will be aware that the Debating Society is, apart from the S.C.M., the oldest Club at Victoria College. It is not proposed that this article should be devoted to a factual account of the debating activities at Victoria over the past fifty years, nor even over a shorter period. Rather is it hoped that a general treatment, by touching on prominent features of the Society's development, will give readers a good idea of what the Society aims at achieving.
The first point of interest is the fact that all debates inside the Society are conducted on an Oxford Union basis. As debates are rarely held against outside teams (apart from Joynt Scroll) this means that the general idea is to decide all questions for debate on a division of the House. However, a provision is made for judges to place individual speakers. Points are awarded and the best debater at the end of the year becomes the winner of the Union Prize. This Award has never had the public glamour associated with the Plunket Medal, but in many ways it represents the result of harder and more consistent work.
Of course, the Plunket Medal is commonly regarded as the highest award of the Society, and over the years has become a mark of general University distinction. It is an award for oratory and is given on the decision of a majority of three outside judges at a specially organised public contest. Many criticisms have been made over the years concerning specific results, and probably few contests have resulted in a decision acceptable to all critics. This controversy usually stems from differing ideas of the nature and purpose of Oratory. Notwithstanding this, the contest has survived since its founding. For many years it was honoured by Vice-Regal patronage owing to its origin, while it is interesting to note that the earliest contests were decided by a vote of the audience.
Victoria's overall record in the contests for the New Zealand University Bledisloe Medal for Oratory, and for the Joynt Scroll for Debating, has been good. It has been suggested that the audience at Victoria is the hardest to please in New Zealand, and that this results in a particularly hard-hitting type of debating which is often very successful.
Of course, all judges do not agree about styles, and some Victoria teams in recent years have not met with the success that had been expected.
Debating at Victoria has undoubtedly been strengthened by the emphasis on law studies here and the consequent attendance of large numbers of students aiming at a career at the Bar. Indeed the lists of our prizewinners include far more of those who have been successful in law than of any other group. This has led to the criticism that the Debating Society is merely a school in sophistry for budding criminal lawyers. Even so, it is fair to say that the general tenor of debating has been sincere throughout.
It would not be a complete study, in fact it would be a distorted one, if no attention was paid to the kinds of topic that have been debated. It is a fact that the interest in political matters at Victoria is, and has been, very high. Consequently members have divided around the political issues that concern the world as a whole and New Zealand in particular.
Naturally, groups are strong from time to time, and it is probable that any reputation Victoria possesses is a result of battles inside the Debating Society. This reputation is the result of the onesided exaggeration of the activities of the more sensational groups by the press in New Zealand. In ignoring the existence of those groups who hold to moderate and conservative views, and highlighting the existence of extremists, the organs of public opinion have presented a false picture.
Nevertheless, all sections of the Society hold closely to the rights and privileges of free and frank discussion. After all, such discussions are primarily an internal matter; and if outside interference ceased or had never existed, the whole situation would be much happier.
Past members of the Society can be sure that even if the achievements of the present do not always equal those of the past, nevertheless the traditions behind them are just as strong. An examination of records shows previous variations in standards and enthusiasm. This still happens, but the important factor still is the attempt to develop clear thinking and the proper organisation of the ideas and expression of the members. This will go on, and Victoria can probably be sure of continuing to contribute many people to the service of New Zealand and the world. A large number of them will be helped by membership of the Society. Thus will the Debating Society fill the valuable place in University affairs it has always done up to the present.
The highest honour in sport is to become an International, and although the numbers who gain this honour are relatively few, Victoria University College has had an impressive list of sportsmen who have become Internationals.
In Rugby, several members of the University Club have gained International status. In
When the
In
In
Two other men who attended Victoria University College and gained New Zealand honours but not whilst playing for the College were J. Wells and E. W. T. Tindill.
At Cricket, the University Club has had three Internationals, E. G. McLeod (who had also represented New Zealand in
At Tennis, Victoria's most famous New Zealand representative is C. E. Malfroy, New Zealand Davis Cup player; whilst R. R. T. Young represented New Zealand in the Davis Cup whilst in residence at 'Varsity in England.
At Athletics, Victoria University College has a large number of Internationals. L. A. Tracy, A. B. Sievwright, W. G. Kalaugher, F. S. Ramson, A. D. Priestley, C. B. Allan, R. W. Lander, C. H. Jenkins, M. Leadbetter and G. J. Sceats all represented New Zealand on various occasions. Kalaugher represented New Zealand at the Olympic Games at Amsterdam and is the only Victoria College man to represent New Zealand at the greatest of all International meetings. A. B. Sievwright represented New Zealand in the Australasian Championships at Sydney in
At Hockey, E. G. McLeod captained New Zealand, as also did N. R. Jacobsen, whilst H. F. Bollard also gained national honours at this sport touring Australia. H. B. Lawry represented the 2nd N.Z.E.F. team which performed so well in India following the end of World War II in
It is notable that E. G. McLeod has gained New Zealand honours in two sports, Cricket and Hockey.
At Badminton, E. A. Rousell was a member of the New Zealand team which toured Australia in
In Golf, W. G. Home was a member of the New Zealand Golf team which played a Test Match against Australia at Lower Hutt in
The following is the list of Internationals from Victoria University College who were members of the College Clubs whilst at University. It does not include those who played for other City Clubs and gained the honour but does include those who gained the honour where University did not have a Club in the particular sport or whilst playing for another University or whilst in the Services:
Since its genesis nearly forty-eight years ago, the Men's Hockey Club has woven a history of more than ordinary interest. The sturdy threads of the Club's progress can be traced through bright, impressive patterns of good years, and sombre apologetic patches of bad years. But the final impression is one of constant unity—a unity generously endowed with the fine sense of bonne camaraderie and enthusiasm which inspired the beginnings of the Club.
A successful launching of the Club in
The united efforts of this pair resulted in a gathering of the College's first sports representatives at Karori Park on
This team lost all but one game in the first round, but in the second round improved to such a degree that it was able to defeat a hitherto invincible team in Waiwetu and draw with Karori, the ultimate champions of their grade. If success did not attend this team's first season on the field, it was certainly not for lack of enthusiasm. Anecdotes of how the members of the team regularly gathered on a frost-hardened section in Thorndon Quay to practise at six o'clock in the morning testify to the ardour displayed by the players for their sport. And there are stories of the Club's agitation for a Student Society decision as to the College colours to be adopted, their organization of those concerts and dances which had the salutary effects of consolidating the Club and fostering a healthy College spirit among the students.
In the following season the Club was establishing itself firmly as a live College institution and two teams, a Senior and Junior were entered. Though both teams were outclassed, many of the members were furnishing proof of substantial improvement by being selected for local representative teams. D. Matheson from the seniors and I. M. Batham and B. C. Smith from the juniors represented Wellington in their respective grades. Club spirit flourished as strongly as ever, contributing materially to the social life of the College in the form of the second Hockey Ball held in conjunction with the Tennis Club. Next to the Capping functions, this was the social event of the year.
Notwithstanding the formation of the Football Club in
With the change of the College colours from dark maroon and pale blue to the familiar gorse green and gold in
History, however, preferred to record otherwise, and the performances of the four teams of
In a team, captained by one H. G. R. Mason (now Attorney-General for New Zealand and Minister of Education), swept all before it and won for itself the distinction of being the first College combination to win a local championship. This, it achieved by winning all except three games which were drawn. The statistics actually record one loss. The truth is that the game had been won by 10 goals to 2 but had to be forfeited on account of having included in the team the Bogle brothers who were unregistered players.
The Senior team was atoning for their previous ignominy and finished third in their grade in the following year, indicating that the coveted championship honours were again within reach. The Juniors, captained by S. A. Eichelbaum (who has since been a constant supporter of the Club), narrowly failed in this quest, being the eventual runners-up of their grade. a team again excelled themselves by winning their second Championship, this honour continued to elude the 1st Eleven.
Throughout these years of unfulfilled optimism, a mounting list of Wellington representatives was strengthening the Senior team. R. St. J. Beere, who was still captain of the XI in
In
The subsequent years reflected the lustre of this notable triumph and the College XI continued to assert itself in the local championship by being very close runners-up for the next two years. The Club itself has gained added inspiration from the consistently fine achievements of the Senior team and by
By now, Club enthusiasm had reached an unprecedented pitch. The College had played Otago University, winning 3—2, and arrangements were in train for a visit to Auckland in the following
Then came the years in which the First World War made inevitable inroads on the Club's playing strength. It will not be possible to list the names of those members who served and died on those other battlefields, but due recognition of their services and sacrifices are more appropriately and faithfully recorded elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the continual drain of manpower resulted in only one team's being fielded by
Resurrection was delayed until
By
In
The boom of
The enthusiasm, loyalty and healthy activity of the Club of
In
Although the growth of the Club had reached its limit, the momentum imparted by the activity of those earlier years kept it in a constant state of mobility. In
In succeeding years, the membership had found its level at six teams and although a decline in playing standard was experienced, much was done to keep alive the spirit of the Club. There are accounts of field days when matches were played against the "Old Brigade," of bright smoke concerts and the springing up of Social teams notable for the spiritedness rather than the skill of their play. A new generation of players had sprung to the fore. A. B. Dixon, son of Mr G. F. Dixon, proved a keen and capable Club Captain and a valuable player. F. L. Newcombe, W. F. Johnston and S. Braithwaite, won New Zealand University Blues, while D. Beresford, N. Buchanan, G. Shaw and A. Sharp—a former Blue and Rhodes Scholar—found places in the provincial side. The
In
b team, which rejoiced in the title of the "Social Team," excelled themselves by virtually winning their Grade Championship after a series of most enjoyable games. Actually, the team finished one point behind the official winners but had played two fewer games during the season. The general excellence of the Club was reflected by its gaining second honours in the Club Championship. The Club was represented at the inaugural New Zealand Winter Tournament held at Dunedin, and produced one New Zealand blue in N. W. Towns.
In the post-war period there have been promising signs of another successful era,
Apart from Hec. Lawry, many of the older members have ceased to play and the last two years have seen younger members assimilating experience. The Club is in a healthy state and Club activity still contributes to the College life. The Tournament was held in Wellington in
It is now left to future reviewers to record whether the present era will be a good or a bad one. The years before have here been reviewed, and though this history may be satisfactorily complete from the point of view of time, much valuable data may have been overlooked and, certainly, much omitted. How and when many Club enthusiasts of the early years were later elected office-bearers; stories of meetings at Karori Park of G. F. Dixon, R. St. J. Beere, Mr Justice Smith and S. A. Eichelbaum, complete with oranges, to cheer on the team of
However, if some of the colour may not have been sufficiently applied, it is hoped that the patterns have remained definable and that the final impression conveyed will be one worthy of Victoria's pioneer Sports Club.
In
Nevertheless, on
In
The first important event of
In
The following year, Brosnan, O'Leary, de la Mare, C. E. Phillips, A. T. Duncan, A. Curtayne, O. Tennent, and W. J. Robertson represented New Zealand University against the Sydney University team on tour in New Zealand, while Duncan also played for Wellington. The Club's strength was, meanwhile, steadily growing. In
Ryan remained in the provincial team from
In
By contrast, in
His feat was eclipsed in the very next year by G. G. Aitken and S. K. Siddells, who both played for New Zealand against the touring South Africans, Aitken being captain in the first two tests, and Siddells playing in the last, thus becoming the Club's first All Blacks. In Wellington sides were Siddells, Aitken, Jackson, Hanson, D. H. Scott, R. R. Scott, C. B. Thomas, F. C. Hutchison, and G. G. MacKay; and the New Zealand team in Sydney included Hanson, Jackson, Aitken, Siddells, D. H. Scott, and H. N. Burns.
At the beginning of the
By the end of
In
Next year witnessed only a slight abatement of the standard of the first championship season, as the Club again carried off the Jubilee Cup, though unable to retain the challenge trophy for another year. The list of Wellington representatives was still further extended by Ramson, Mackay, Mackenzie, Leys, H. W. and F. Cormack, C. E. Dixon, R. E. Diederich, J. M. Edgar and E. K. Eastwood;
Two great years were over. Victoria College Rugby, from its vigorous state, declined, as so often before and since, without delay or explanation, and in
The slump was a contributing factor. The First XV struggled on, recording an occasional win, and deriving consolation from the seven teams that the large membership had allowed, and the success of the Fourth Grade side which was, for the second time in succession, runner-up in its grade. Diederich and N. Hislop were both Wellington players, maintaining the long and honourable tradition.
Once more, however, in
Not content with emulation, they passed next season to eminence, for in
It was natural then, that when preparations for the
On the heels of calamity came success. Once more in the Second Division, the First XV began brilliantly by winning all its first five matches, and losing the next two by narrow margins. Recovering, they had six more victories, and finally won the competition, five clear points in the lead. Unpredictable as ever, the College had won its thirds
In
The still-dwindling numerical strength of the Club was, in
Next year, the College once more lost its First Division status, for, after being defeated in the first two qualifying games, it was placed in the Hardham Cup competition. Once again three teams only represented the Club in the Rugby Union's competitions, none being able to specially distinguish itself, though the First XV, by finishing third, accomplished a creditable performance. Good signs were the resumption of inter-College games, including that against Te Aute College. Patrick and MacLennan added to their provincial record, but no others were able either to do likewise, or to enter representative ranks for the first time. No New Zealand University games could be played this year, but
In
It would be fair to say that this small taste of success had prepared no-one for the wonderful year of
Perhaps it was over-confidence, perhaps lack of keenness, perhaps lack of quality, that toppled the First XV from its proud place. In
Hope for the future was the only consolation, but reality was coy. The Colts XV were runners-up, but the First XV, notwithstanding a really promising end of season burst, were not able to improve their final grade position, and remained low down in the Hardham Cup table. Only towards the winter's end did the Senior team begin to play with polish and verve—four wins and one draw in sixteen matches tells its own story. Representative honours were gained by Meads, Jacob, R. T. Shannon and R. G. Wilde, who all played for Wellington teams; by the two first mentioned and C. A. Shannon who represented New Zealand University against Auckland; and by Jacob who toured New Zealand and Fiji with the New Zealand Maoris and was reserve back for the North Island.
That is the record of Victoria College Rugby. Many seasons, for results, have been poor and barren: no winter can seem dull, stale, or un-profitable which has given so many the opportunity of playing Rugby with or against the finest that Wellington or New Zealand can produce, the best of friends, companions, and rivals.
It was in the year
Even in those days there were difficulties with practice wickets but the players seem to have overcome them; and, in
In
In the early years of the Club's history there were many prominent figures: H. W. Monaghan, the New Zealand representative player who played for the Club for several seasons; F. Joplin who gained Plunket Shield Honours, was a sound and reliable bat, and who afterwards for years was coach of the Wellington College XI; the late Gilbert Howe, for several years a Wellington representative wicket keeper; and C. Berendsen (now Sir Carl Berendsen) another Wellington representative wicket keeper; and the representative players Dr Foster, J. F. W. Dickson and J.
After the War, however, a new start was made with a team in the Junior and Third grades. In
That this was justified is seen by the results of the following season
The results of the
Fair success attended the Club the following season, the Senior eleven winning two games out of nine. Particularly noteworthy was the performance of A. M. Hollings who scored a century in three consecutive Club matches and earned a place in the Wellington Plunket Shield team. He thus became the first 'Varsity man to gain this honour since the end of World War I.
In
In
The
The following season,
In the following year
In
On the Christmas tour, Blandford scored 184 v. North Taranki and Paetz scored a century against Manawatu.
University were third in the Senior championship in
In
In
In
University under J. R. Sheffield as captain were sixth in the senior championships in the first War season of
During the following season
The next season
In
The Club still managed to maintain a senior eleven the following season of
In
The next season
In
This season the eleven has had an average season and G. H. Stringer has captained a moderate eleven with skill. Two wins have been gained up to the time of writing and R. A. Vance and J. H. Oakley have represented Wellington against the Hutt Valley, whilst R. A. Vance played for Town v. Country.
Like all sporting clubs, the University Cricket Club lost some of its finest men in the second World War. Among those who gave their lives were N. H. McMillan, a former captain, A. P. Cobden, a splendid bat and slip field, J. B. Stephenson a New Zealand University Blue,
Any history of the Club must make special reference to the stalwarts of other years who have placed University in the happy position it is in today. The Club is numerically strong and should do even better in the future. Amongst the out-standing figures of University cricket were R. H. C. Mackenzie, a splendid bat and safe wicket-keeper, E. G. McLeod, a true International, E. T. Leys, who said farewell to V.U.C. cricket with a dashing century, E. C. Wiren, a great club worker, A. M. Hollings, a really fine all-rounder, L. M. Pacey and H. C. Bailey, two solid opening batsmen, J. A. R. Blandford, the finest wicket-keeper the club possessed between the two World Wars, P. D. Wilson who for so many years has shown University cricketers how to bat correctly and well, N. H. McMillan, a really splendid captain and true sportsman, J. A. Ongley, a first class stylish bat, B. A. Paetz, a fine field and dashing bat, J. R. Stevens, a splendid all rounder, and W. Tricklebank, the best fast bowler the Club possessed during the period between the two Wars.
The Club also owes a great deal to G. H. Stringer who, both on and off the field, has done much for University cricket; and, as mentioned above, reference has to be made to C. H. Hain and P. B. Broad for their work following the end of the first World War.
It is difficult to mention all who have helped University to maintain its place in Wellington cricket, but reference must be made of the performances of H. E. Moore, both as a player and administrator. He has been an invaluable member of the Club.
It would not be difficult to add name after name, for the men mentioned above have had the support of many others. It is perhaps unfair to single them out but their outstanding performances entitle them to special mention. Their sportsmanship and ability have left behind a host of memories, and University cricketers and supporters will long remember them.
The victoria university college athletic club faces the second half century of the College with as full a record as any College Club can claim. Before its official inception in
The founder and first 'leader' of the Club was G. F. Dixon, who played a leading role in promoting the Tournament, and who from then right up to the present, has looked after the Club's interests at every opportunity.
In its embryo stages, athletics at Victoria College were fostered by the generosity of the late J. P. Firth of Wellington College, in making the Wellington College grounds available to our athletes, and by Professor T. H. Easterfield, an old Cambridge half blue, who gave much of his time, coupled with the benefit of his advice and experience, to our early athletes. Prior to World War I, many notable athletes rose from the Club's ranks. Probably the greatest was Athol Hudson who first competed at Tournament in
Following World War I, the Athletic Club had a lengthy period of success and produced many outstanding athletes. From
From
Unfortunately, space does not permit a survey of all the outstanding athletes of the Club since World War I, but their achievements will be found tabulated below. Yet it is impossible to pass on without mentioning some of them in slightly more detail. In the Sprints there have been L. A. Tracy (nine wins and several records at Tournament, three New Zealand Championships and a first and a second in Australasian Championships), M. Leadbetter, who became a champion while at V.U.C. and later transferred to Canterbury (six Tournament titles, seven New Zealand Championships and a New Zealand record of 9.8 seconds for 100 yards) and J. Sutherland (four Tournament titles, including equalling the record of 10 seconds for the 100 yards, and one New Zealand title). Among the Hurdlers, R. W. Lander, who first ran for Wellington, then Otago, and later for Wellington (six New Zealand Championships, an Australasian Championship and a New Zealand record of 15.2 seconds for the 120 yards hurdles). F. S. Ramson was not only a great hurdler, but the greatest all-rounder the College has produced. His record reads: ten Tournament Championships scored in five different events (a record which has not been equalled), four New Zealand hurdles titles, an Austalasian title and a New Zealand record (which has since been beaten) of 56.8 seconds in the 440 yards hurdles. The distance races have seen D. R. Scrymgeour in the three miles (two Tournament titles, including a record
In
M. Leadbetter, 100 yards, 9.8 secs, in
R. W. Lander, 120 yards hurdles, 15.2 secs in
F. S. Ramson, 440 yards hurdles, 56.8 secs in
In addition, G. J. Sceats for some time held the best New Zealander's performance in the High Jump at 6 feet, a height which has since been beaten.
Held by V.U.C. 15 times (
Held by V. U. C. 10 times (
On
At this time also, the Wellington Association was trying to arrange inter-club play. By
The first surge of energy in the Club soon began to wane and in
The following year the Club was at its lowest ebb and seemed to remain an insignificant part of College life until
That year it entered two teams in local competitions and for the first time these teams featured prominently. In the same year the Club won the Basketball Shield at Tournament. The matches were played at Kelburn Park with three teams only competing. Canterbury, today out-passing all the Colleges in Basketball, was not in a position to field a team in
In
In
The following year produced success in both fields. With Miss Walker as captain and Miss P. Higgin as Secretary-Treasurer, the Club entered two teams in the competition. Of these, the Senior A team finished third, and produced three Wellington representatives. At Tournament the team performed better than ever. It seemed that at last Auckland's run was broken. Although half the team was new to Tournament, it nevertheless scooped the pool, replacing experience with fitness and combination. Blues were freely awarded including four New Zealand University Blues. The question was, could this success last? It seemed not, for, although the
In
The inevitable result of the war years became apparent in all Club functions during
The Basketball Club can have held little interest for the students of The Spike reports that the Club was truly in the doldrums. It had returned once more to the lowly position it had held in
Miss Gay Nimmo seems to have infused life into the Club once more in
And so we come to
The question is—are we on the upsurge again? Several of our keener members are leaving and feel that it would be unfair to take a place in the
To the many students whose interest in tennis helps to make the Victoria College courts possibly the most popular in the whole country, it may be a surprise to learn that twice in the last five years only the timely protest of an influential supporter of the Club has saved the courts from obliteration. Utilitarians, who could not resist the lure of almost half an acre of flat terrain for building sites, were finally persuaded that no real good could come of destroying one amenity to create another.
To tell the story of this amenity, it may be satisfactory to make a geographical, and then a geological, division of the fifty years. The first stage saw an enthusiastic organisation fighting for
Before discussing the period of the concrete courts, it may be appropriate here to remark that the game was not very seriously affected by the second world war. Only for two seasons was the regular competition suspended and, despite the lack of balls in
There was no general regret in
While no startling rise in the standard of play has been noted during the period of the present courts, the team of
When tournament was held in Wellington in
The tennis finals in
Miss E. McLean was the last Victoria representative to win the ladies singles event when, in
An injury to W. Smith, star Otago player, helped Victoria slightly to win the tennis cup in
Mr R. A. Wright, M.P., opened the new courts on
The period which had just closed had witnessed the zenith of New Zealand University tennis. Just how high the standard was can be realised when we note that Roly Ferkins, Wellington Wilding Shield player, could win only one title in five years of competition. C. M. Malfroy, who in later years was recognised as the second best doubles player in England, gave Victoria a singles win in
Victoria's first singles win after the first war was registered by Miss Tracy in
Before the war, the Club won the Wellington Senior Championship for two years in succession, though unable to make much impression at the University Tournament.
In
In
The Club is fifty years old. In
The value of this new club as a social centre was soon appreciated as it began to play matches against other Wellington clubs, and then against Canterbury College. Misses Greenfield and Ross, and Messrs H. P. Richmond, J. C. Burns, and F. P. Wilson (later Professor Wilson) played in this match, which was to presage the inter-university tournament two years later. Athletics, debating, and tennis were the only contests in the tournament, and the first contest enhanced the standing of the Tennis Club.
No rule restricting players to two events operated in the first tournament, and, though the men players found Anthony Wilding a stumbling block, Miss C. V. Longton won the ladies' singles, and, with Miss Van Staveren, the doubles. The team on this occasion was Mrs C. V. Longton, Misses Van Staveren, F. G. Roberts, M. C. Ross, E. F. Wedde, and A. W. Griffiths; and Messrs F. P. Wilson, R. C. St. J. Beere, F. P. Richmond, Graham, F. A. de la Mare, and A. J. Will.
Victoria won only one title in the next two seasons. Miss A. F. Batham won this in
In
Good players help to bring distinction to a club, but it is to the unostentatious supporters who do the hard work that organisations such as the Victoria College Tennis Club owe most gratitude. With a tradition of selflessness behind it, the Victoria Club and its present enthusiastic committee should carry on a work so auspiciously begun and so splendidly maintained by its supporters.