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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 5, No. 3 May 28, 1942

The Communist View-Point

The Communist View-Point

Dr. Harold Silverstone, graduate of the Universities of New Zealand and Edinburgh, said that as one who had spent seven years of his life as a university student he felt a keen interest in the role of the universities in this most fateful of all wars.

"In Nazi Germany," said Dr. Silverstone, "universities are made to serve only two purposes: first, as centres for the teaching and spread of the so-called 'National Socialist" ideology of German "race superiority'; econd, to prepare for war by furthering research in weapons of destruction as well as in training personnel for the handling of subjugated peoples.

"In New Zealand, as in the other countries opposed to Nazism, the universities can no longer regard themselves as little academic communities isolated from the rest of the world. It is 'pro bono pubico' now—not 'ars gratia artis' that must be their guiding principle. It is my opinion that university students have three things to do to-day:

"They must uphold the cultural standards of our people against, the inroads of fascusm. They must study hard to complete their courses as soon as possible and become as proficient as possible in their work—this both for the purpose of the war and for the work of reconstruction after it is won. They must emerge themselves completely with the people in the national war effort, whether as present or future soldiers or in the ordinay day-to-day life of the community.

"The universities must strive to make themselves centres of work, service and political understanding and to play their full and necessary part "in the organisation of victory."