V.U.C. Hangs its Head

3½% of Students Contribute to Loan

With the memory of last year's splendid effort to urge us on we launched into the Victory Loan campaign with high hopes. The organisers of the College Campaign, confident that last year's total could be topped, set the quota modestly (they thought) at £1,000. To assist the less pecunious the executive instituted an instalment scheme by which it was hoped to have every student investing in the loan. At the end of the seventh and last day the total stood at £1.184—yes, one thousand one hundred and eighty four pounds from the students to the Victory Loan. A really magnificent effort—until we analyse the figures!!!

Closer scrutiny of these figures, however. leaves us with a very empty feeling.

They show that £1050 was subscribed by five people, nine students availed themselves of the executive instalment offer and twelve students purchased a £1 bond. These together with the bonds which were raffled show that the whole amount was subscribed by forty people. Forty students from eleven hundred! This is indeed a brilliant effort, for which the students as a body deserve a stand up clap, for a group of apathetic. disinterested ivory tower dwellers, far removed from the tradition of student movements in the van of all struggles for freedom, and remote indeed from their Chinese and European fellows. How can this measure alongside the record of our own students overseas or even our own Loan and patriotic work day appeals in the past?

Can this result be a measure of student interest in the War, in Victory and in the Peace. It would appear that this is so when only 3½% of the college is willing to take part in this activity. Wake Up Victoria! You are losing ground!