Last Year's "Smad."

(By Distinguished Contemporary.)

My attention has again been drawn to the activities of my muck-raking contemporaries owing to the unparalleled effrontery of one member of the editorial staff of "Smad" who forwarded to mo the first two copies of that nauseating production. Not content with introducing this garbage to my notice, he actually proceeded to request my candid opinion of it. He shall have it—and not in the terms of fulsome and complacent flattery which he doubtless anticipated, but in the plain, simple language of a lover of the truth. My worst fears were realised on glancing between the sheets of this hatch-potch of slander and malice. The majority of University journalistic efforts arc a harmless compound of inanity and vulgarity. "Smad" was more—it was a stinking cesspit of calumnies. I found there the names and reputations of our noblest and most enlightened students plastered with the filth of unscrupulous journalism and besmeared with the mire of deliberate malice and vindictiveness. Mr. Mountjoy. one of the most distinguished and cultured of ur contemporaries, an orator whose name it is a pleasure even to mention, is exposed in the filthy sheets of your gutterpress production to the obscene ululations of a pack of literary pariahs. Mr. Bannister, no mean orator and literary artist, and one who has been for very many years a talented and devoted servant of the College is made actually the butt of the slanderous vituperations of this set of amateur inkslingers. I found even the distinguished name of Mr. W. P. Rollings degraded and defiled in a series of witticisms reeking of the bar-room and brewery.

[It was unfortunately necessary here to remove some passages of Distinguished Contemporary's letter. The excised portions dealt mainly with the late editor's personal habits and appearance and were judged to be of too intimate a nature to interest readers of this paper.]

The most abandoned wretches of the University are now preparing from the loathsome sediments they call their brains nauseating skimmings which they shall offer to their unsuspecting University public as a commentary on the events of the day. Whether this public menace will be allowed to endure during 1931 I cannot tell, but my fears are for the worst. If it is, I can only voice my protest that this festering mass in short should be allowed to contaminate any longer the well springs of beauty. Furthermore, any attempt to thrust another "Smad" before my offended nose will be met by violence.

[Distinguished Contemporary is reminded that his subscription of 1/6 for six numbers of "Smad" is now due.—Ed.]