Questionnaires.

Before the Congress began a certain amount of preliminary work had been done, various University Unions had issued questionnaires to their students and the replies had been collated and issued in the form of a report which formed a basis for argument. Several noted speakers had been briefed to lead the discussions and Sir Ernest Simon, lately Lord Mayor of Manchester a Liberal and a noted authority on housing and in his own opinion at any rate on affairs generally led off with a rather unsatisfactory review of modern problems and the position of the Universities in relation to them. It very quickly became evident that in the mind of the Congress there is only one modern problem, or only one at least of any significance before which all others must be set aside, and that may be summed up in Mussolini's slogan: "Believe, Obey, Fight." Sir Ernest Simon did not want a dictatorship because he felt that democratic rule as exemplified in the British Commonwealth of Nations has been built up through the centuries on qualities of human nature, human experience and human habit which, under the unfavorable influence of a dictatorship, will be swept away in a night and, once destroyed, can never be regained. His remedy as far as Universities are concerned, was a greater emphasis on the social sciences.—to use a phrase of Sir Arthur Salter's "Every student should have some sort of course in public affairs."

So much Sir Ernest Simon; the next speaker was Mr. R. Noun May, Secretary of the N.U.S. who may be remembered in New Zealand as a visiting University debater some years ago. He felt that it is essential that a University should be isolated from the distractions of the outside world, but while a protective wall is a necessity, he thought at least there should be some windows in the wall.