(Published Twice in the Session)

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. J. H. Dunn. Finance Secretary. A subscription form, for the convenience of past students, and students leaving College this year. will be found opposite page 16.

Editorial

A French savant is reported to have said that if he had been consulted at the time of the creation of the world, he could have given some hints of great value. And we would earnestly desire that all those who, in the days and years to come, will take down this book and read its pages with a discerning eye, when we, perhaps, are old and grey and full of sleep, we would that they all were here, and that we might take toll of their matured opinion and their enlightened experience. But in their absence we have gone to a higher authority: we have drawn heavily upon the wisdom of our fathers. Not a custom has been allowed to lapse, not a rule has been infringed, of all that they set down, and now there remains but to step tremblingly upon the stage and face for a brief moment the ominous silence of the expectant throng, before the curtain is pulled aside and the play begins.

We shall not delay the curtain for long. But the wisdom of our ancestors has decreed that first must come an editorial. What is an editorial? The ancient oracles make no answer. How long must one stand tremblingly before the footlights, and what is one to talk about to amuse the vast waiting concourse? This is where the ancient wisdom fails, and one is left to stand forth alone, like Horatius on the bridge and Mrs. Hemans s boy on the burning deck. We hope we shall not have to stand as long as they have been standing there. What shall it be about? About the desirability of College reform, and the wonderful prospect that is beginning to loom on the horizon? Or about the impossibility of reform in this wild generation, which has almost fulfilled the prophecy of a sad poet in the closing decade of the last century, that men would 4i outstrip the winds in speed and lose the boon of sleep"? Shall we affect the sneer and the assumed cunning of the weary man of the world, qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes? Or shall we return to the coming glories of our University when the cloud-capped towers of her hostels uprear their masonry upon these hills? As one of the chief rights of man is the right to be different, let us make a departure from the furrowed track, let us set ourselves up as an arbiter of College disputes, and let us commence by adapting a quotation from a brilliant Irish writer of the Orange school, "There are no facts in Victoria; there are only passions and opinions." But come, come—one way or another we must write an editorial, and it is high time that we had started.