"The Free Lance"

The local comic paper is at it again! The humour of the "Free Lance" is seldom to be taken seriously. Its serious pronouncements, however, are sometimes really funny; perhaps that is the reason why it survives. Or is it that the afternoon-tea sessions of the local Mayfair are incomplete without an occasional dish of the usual claptrap about the V.U.C. Debating Society? Poor old V.U.C.! In a city where rich men tumble over each other to bestow large sums of money upon public and charitable objects, you alone remain unbenefited; the public-spirited rich man cannot stomach the Debating Society, so makes his munificent bequests to the Plunket Society, the Karitane Home, the Soldiers' Memorial, the Art Gallery, the Public Hospital, and so on. Look at the spacious parks and beautifully-equipped children's playgrounds donated to the City; count up the valuable scholarships bestowed upon primary and secondary schools, which do not indulge in the sinister activity of debate. What is a mere Chair of Economics or of Agriculture beside these? Go to, Free Lance! you deduce too much from an eightpence given in charity. Wellington is a dreadfully poor town—as poor as the quality of its humorous journal.