Plain Damn Bad Journalism ....

Sirs,—The tone of what has passed, in recent issues of Salient, for criticism suggests that the paper is as much committed as ever to allowing boy critics to wet their beds in public.

Mr. Robb uses your latest, highly subsidised issue, to castigate poor little Argot (which, I am assured, receives no student funds in aid) and to suggest that student money be withheld from it, thereby enforcing the silence he prefers. This may be strong criticism by Salient standards—or it may be just plain damn bad journalism.

The critic is on stronger ground, of course, when he suggests that student papers should stop being a vehicle for the adolescent fantasies of ageing poets. As one of the latter, I would much prefer students to have their own—but I'm not really to blame that today's students aren't as lively as those of earlier years; only perhaps for the charity of allowing some of my own earlier fantasies to be used till such time as the drought breaks up on the clay patch.

The rest of Mr. Robb's review, in tone, reminded me of a poem by W. B. Yeats (of whom Mr. Robb may have heard), written in the early years of this century, and titled; "On Hearing That The Students Of Our New University Have Joined The Agitation Against Immoral Literature." It goes:

Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,

That long to give themselves for wage.

To shake their wicked sides at youth

Restraining reckless middle-age?

Mr. Robb may genuinely want standards to be raised all round— in which case, good luck to him. But you have a responsibility to him and to all your critics, to ensure that youthful stamina and spleen is backed by some real knowledge and reason. Otherwise they may just as well confine their self expression to Kleenex.

Louis Johnson

Comments Reviewer and Literary Editor Peter Robb, "Amusingly irrelevant." Comments Co-editor John Llewellyn, "Just what is he trying to say?" Comments Co-editor Hugh Rennie. "An editor must not be afraid of opinion, however silly. We'll print it."