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Editorial

We are students at a university. A university is an institution designed primarily towards the propagation of knowledge. Knowledge is a guide and condition of action. To ensure correct action should be the aim of a university education.

Some courses are more obviously practical than others. A student of Dairy Science Is less likely to proclaim the doctrine of Dairy Science for Dairy Science's sake than an Arts student is to hoist the banner of art for art's sake. But it is with this less obviously practical knowledge—this art, culture or social knowledge that 'Spike' is chiefly concerned.

Art is the most general and the highest form of learning. If philosophy is the Proof of the wine of knowledge, then art is the overproof. But there is a danger of dilution with the water of falsehood and conventional dogma during distillation. There is a danger of art becoming lost in the clouds of unreality, and Antaeus-like Losing its strength.

How does our university education meet the demands of society today? Is it a desirable accomplishment to be able to write Latin prose? Should Russian be taught without reforming society itself. Yet since it is also true that a change in society pre-supposes education, we have a right to expect the best that the fighting spirit of the students can procure.

Again it may with some justice be objected that we students should not throw Stones, even if they have been given us for bread. Too many students gain degrees At the expense of their education. Though veritable encyclopaediæ concerning West-Germanic doubling or the sex-life of the Algae, they are shy in public, have no ideas on fundamental issues, lack a philosophy to co-ordinate their knowledge—are hopeless as leaders.

Today when even the most conservative foresee 'some change,' and when leading Intellects all over the world are unmistakeably revolutionary in their outlook, it is more important than ever that the people should not be disappointed when they look to universities for leaders armed with the necessary theory.

What is to be done?

We will strike a blow for progress, not by sitting in splendid isolation on the hill High above the wordly city like the gods on Mt. Olympus,-not merely by pursuing Some single study to the exclusion of all else, but by becoming acqauainted with as Many people as possible, being interested in a wide field of study outside our specialty, working in factories during vacations or perhaps identifying ourselves with some movement in the city. Then as our ideas extend and co-ordinate, we will experience the sensations once known as religious conversion, where the mysteries which once tor page 8 mented us become clear and neatly fit the central doctrine, where every experience expands and intensifies conviction, where we find a purpose in life and feel only pity for the superior intellectual who sneers at enthusiasm and remains non-attached.

Armed with this theory and with the imagination and learning to envisage a better order of things to fan our ardour for progress, we must endeavour to align ourselves with those forces in the community which are moving towards progress, and fight those which uphold the conservation of effete or evil institutions, or who wish to burden suffering humanity with fresh shackles. Discoverers in the world of art and social questions must fight for the recognition of their discoveries with the same ardour as the pioneers in science and medicine have shown in the past. We must risk the slander of those whose interest is not in the spreading of the truth, our ardour must survive the chilling pessimism of the unbeliever, we must brave the ignorant attacks of over-zealous 'patriots,' we must pursue the line we know to be right, even when, as in Germany, the ranting of members of parliament is replaced by the bullets of secret police.

The tone of student thought at the present time is decidedly encouraging. More and more students are at last learning that their task is not merely to interpret the world but to change it.