I listened to an American propaganda broadcast the other night; in a parable it likened certain apologists, who are only too numerous among us to the man whose epitaph had been "He hated hydrophobia but loved mad dogs."

Propaganda, of course. Propaganda more red-blooded than anyone would dare present to the sophisticated British palate. Sometimes I envy the American and Russian whole-heartedness in this direction. Their mad dogs are mad dogs and not lost sheep.

A university-trained intelligence is inclined to discount all propaganda—but since this war the line between news and propaganda seems to have disappeared anyway: so somewhere there is bound to be occasionally a grain of truth. Distrust of propaganda is all very well, but it's a little too easy to label anything we don't like as propaganda, and so dismiss it. Under a cloak of scientific detachment do we not shrink often, from facing unpalatable truths?

"Atrocities" for instance. The word stinks in our nostrils. We are armoured in academic scepticism. The Germans have crushed (intellectual life in Poland; have closed the University of Brussels because its professors refused to accept nazi-appointed colleagues on their staff; massacred hundreds of students and young workers in Prague—yes, we had a commemorative broadcast about that last year. These have suffered: are their names, to adapt the words of the same broadcast, not to be mentioned in the common-rooms? The concentration camps, the deportation of workers, the execution of civilian hostages, the two million Jews dead in Europe—are these to be dismissed as "propaganda"? The carefully verified and guaranteed reports of European governments exiled to Britain and the U.S. compiled often from Nazi newspapers themselves—do these deserve no consideration?

Let us by all means be reasonable: let us weigh propaganda and be chary of accepting it at its face value. But for heaven's sake don't let the word "prapaganda" bulldoze us into disregarding any truths lying behind it. Reason should prevail, but not at the expense of justice. Tolerance and moderation should not preclude a certain divine indignation.

Stalin declared that the peoples of the Soviet Union and the Red Army "do not and cannot feel racial hatred for other peoples, including here the German people." But Molotov in a Note submitted to the representatives of Allied and neutral governments, on the subject of German crimes and atrocities in occupied Soviet areas, concluded: "The Hitler Government and its accomplices will not escape stern retribution and deserved punishment for all their unparalleled crimes against the peoples of the U.S.S.R. and against all freedom-loving peoples.

Whether the German people as a whole, who elected Hitler and his gang of butchers to be their lawful leaders, can be vindicated of blame for the war these leaders have provoked, seems a fair question: as much as whether the British people can be entirely absolved from responsibility for the disarmament and appeasement policies of their country before the war.

It must not be forgotten that after the last war certain German war criminals were to be tried for their crimes against humanity and against the Allies. But the Germans first begged, on the grounds of internal politics, to conduct the trials themselves, then at Leipzig made a mockery of justice and of the whole affair. Do we fall for that again?

The idea of hating the sin and loving the sinner is all very well, but how punish the sin and let the sinner go scot-free? The story of an underground communist movement in Germany is probably true enough, but no-one can judge its extent and so far its influence does not seem to have been felt. There has been no protest from the Germans ordered to carry out what Mr. Fraser calls "the practical application of the Nazi philosophy," no revolt against the leaders of the Reich. It is not only impracticable but also, in view of past history, criminally foolish, to draw a distinction between the Nazis and the German people. The Nazis are the German people.

Are we afraid of "going the whole hog," willing to indict the leaders and let their people go? It's a kind of appeasement, this unwillingness to be violent. Students, and so far as New Zealand is concerned students of this college in particular used to have the reputation for espousing causes with all their energy and a fierce reforming zeal.

Probably you won't agree with a word I've said—you are at liberty to protest, mentally, vocally, in this newspaper. That's a beginning anyway. We've made you think.

Your university life has begun.

Gabriel.