Tradition Of Heresy

Readers will notice a thread running through the book which also is a thread running through the story of Victoria—freedom of speech—to some "an academic shibboleth," to others the life-blood of the place.

They will notice that, since 1915, what is sometimes considered to be a tradition has never been very safe in the hands of the official representatives of the College. In 1915 Victoria, as Dr. Beaglehole puts it so well, "found itself at odds, not merely with the community of its own University district, but with the whole of New Zealand." I refer, of course, to the von Zedlitz case. The story of this bad business with its connotation of shame for the ruling caste of New Zealand and of honour for the College is here told fully for the first time. As Dr. Beaglehole says truly: "There is nothing in the College's record of which its men and women have the right to feel proud."

But in 1924 the College Council refused to re-appoint Prof. von Zedlitz. It was as Dr. Beaglehole says: "The petty tragedy of men who feared to do a Just thing." The Council has been pretty petty ever since. In 1933 it did everything but grovel on the floor. All Doctor Beaglehole's observations on this period are bitingly sharp as any honest historian would have to make them. I find particularly manly and honourable Dr. Beaglehole's remarks on his own nonappointment to the Chair of History in 1935—a decision of the Council not uninfluenced by the Commissioner of Police. He says:

" . . . the Council in making an appointment to the staff, was to show itself moved by a political bias which men had proudly thought alien to this college; and the fact that it nevertheless made an excellent appointment cannot exonerate it. Fortune, whose blind favours have so often passed Victoria by, has also on occasion been kind."