Enter the "Salient"

"Smad" is dead. With it is gone the policy which 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 that 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 the 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 upon a diametrically opposite view For it seems to our staff that unless a sufficiently large and wel-informed mass of public opinion can be formed the world over, and formed within a period of months rather than years, the very academic detachment so forcibly and so often placed before us as the "correct" attitude of the student mind, will.—along with most other things that make a university what it is—be lost forever. Every day things become more critical. The international situation grows worse, not steadily but by leaps and hounds.

New Zealand is only a small place and Victoria College is only a small part of New Zealand. But the influence of a compact body of opinion amongst the students, alive to the significance of events, would be far from small.

It is hoped therefore, that free use will be made of these columns by all who wish to do so. The sole qualification of any article necessary to ensure its publication is its literary merit. The name of the paper is not without significance and we hope that as the weeks go by and "Salient" begins to take its destined place amongst the other College activities, it will prove no empty title.

It is your paper. The Editor and the whole staff will be at your disposal for the purpose of interviews in connection with the journal at definite times each week. Please have no hesitation whatever in castling upon them. Those who do so will find a transformation "n the surroundings formerly associated with the College weekly. For the provision of these pleasant quarters we wish to express our gratitude first to those members of the Students Association Executive who worked to effect the transformation and secondly to the Executive as a whole who have co-operated keenly in getting the new venture under way.

For the rest, its success lies in the lap of the gods, and to no small extent in the hands of the students of V.U.C.