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The Spike or Victoria University College Review September 1925

The Spike — or — Victoria University College Review

page break

The Spike
or
Victoria University College Review

The Editorial Committee invites contributions, either in prose or verse, on any subject of general interest, from students or officials connected with the College. All literary communications should be addressed to The Editor, Victoria University College, Wellington Subscriptions are now due, and are payable to Mr. F. A. Ruck, Financial Secretary.

Editorial

"One age has passed, and the age to come Is the age of......"

editorial

With October comes the close of the College year and the time of parting. It is not a time of positive sadness. The Professor's last lecture is not delivered in broken, helpless tones; the student's eyes do not stream with tears, Rather, the Professor utters some equivalent of "au revoir" in plain human fashion, and, looking at the student with inscrutable eyes, wishes him good luck. The student collects his final notes with a mind afar off and removes himself and them with suspicious celerity. He may give vent to a wild yelp of freedom; as a rule his manner is a mixture of relief and dismay. His year's work is not yet done. He has yet to meet and grapple with the Unknown. In a week or two he will be Up Against It. Then will be his time of sadness.

Behind him the College basks peacefully in the charm of a sunlight that was so painfully absent during the lecture months. It is an abandoned citadel, a deserted garden, a shelled peascod, an empty coop. The brilliant company has disbanded. The wild geese have flown. In some odd corner some odd member of the staff might posibly be heard in doleful chant of "Robin Adair." It is hardly likely, for Victoria has long since forgotten how to sing. It has almost forgotten how to laugh. Nor is it in a mood to laugh. Over and above the parting of Professor and Student and the parting of College and Student, Victoria must contemplate a further, more poignant parting—a parting from its old self. It soul is not its own.

Wise, witty and learned men have sat in judgment upon it page 2 and pronounced it to be no more than a pale shade of what it should be; a weak thing that stirs restlessly when the day is done and adds but a feeble glimmer to the light of the world. Pallid from night-work; dyspeptic from quick-lunch education; killing itself by degrees. A gymnasium for him who reads as he runs and runs as he reads, where long memories and longer economics flourish, but no flower of learning. A reed thinly piping the bold strain of "Sapentia magis auro desideranda" only to be shaken in the wind of the answering shout of "Aurum non olet."

The name Victoria was meant for other notions than these. A broken sword perhaps; even a broken head. But both may be mended. Indeed, both must be mended. The armourer professes to be in readiness; something like the hand of the doctor is on the doorknob. What is to be? Will the Victoria to arise from the valley of the shadow of Reform be the Victoria we know or will it be a stranger to us of the old regard, with its doors barred against us? The Victoria that sold us sheepskins for next to nothing in night oil and gave us putty medals marked B.A., L.L.B. and the like wherewith to mend holes in our little careers, we knew to be only a transience; we could not expect it to be sempiternal. But the Victoria of the fitful flashes of thought, of the brave freedom of opinion, of the life and the laughter, of the ideals which may have been a little too generous beside the knowledge we gained and a little too fine for the work we were to do, but which, none-the-less, gave us visions of greater things: will this remain?

Little we have the right to ask, we of the part-time phase. Though the world call us University men we know that we have but the veneer: the present system is not constructed for depth. Enough that we have received full measure for what we have given and carried away something that we may remember. We cannot set a boundary to the march of an institution. But we dare name the starting-place.