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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 7, No. 7 July 26, 1944
World Student Relief
World Student Relief
Can Victoria Progressivists Raise £500?
New Zealand students join with students in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, India, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States—countries where liberty and encouragement to study remain, even though seriously impaired—to raise funds for the sake of their fellow-students in seventeen other countries who are victims of war.
| ߦ | They call for books to save their minds from "barbed-wire disease" and their hearts from despair. |
| ߦ | Hundreds who have had to flee their own countries are making untold sacrifices to continue their work as students. |
| ߦ | Immobilised for the duration, they are studying to equip themselves for the future. |
| ߦ | In China and Russia they have migrated to continue their studies in spite of extreme hardship and the obstacles of war. |
It is Your Privilege and Personal Duty to Your Fellow Students to Support Whole-Heartedly
The August Campaign
for World Student Relief
- Provides direct relief for students and professors who are victims of war.
- Joins with students of other countries in raising funds for student relief.
- Is the recognised channel for aid to student prisoners of war, operating under the Geneva Convention of 1929.
- Is independent, international, non-religious, non-political.
- Believes that students have a special responsibility for their fellow students.
- Builds for the future through relief plus education and reconstruction.
Recent months have seen a serious deterioration in the morale of the prisoners, a regression of their intellectual activity, a weakening of their physical and nervous resistance. This unfavourable development is not due primarily to bad treatment or to the worsening of living conditions. World Student Relief Secretaries who are able to visit the "universities of captivity" write of instances where their courses have been interrupted altogether, in others they have been very much reduced, and the number of students taking part in them has dropped radically. We must pay a tribute to the professors and lecturers, who in the camp universities go on fighting for the maintenance of intellectual activity as an essential factor in keeping up the morale of the young men for whom they feel responsible. For they know that those who give up attending lectures become an easy prey to neurasthenia. They sink into idleness, into endless dreams, they spend hours playing bridge, or reading detective novels and then, one day, even this is over, they just lie down on their beds, having lost contact with their fellow-prisoners and lost the courage to undertake anything at all; they lose hope—they are away. You can prevent this malady by giving them something to do with their minds and hands, some interest in life, and some feeling that you, their fellow-students, still remember them, still care about them.
The U.S.S.R.
The effect of the war on Russian students closely parallels that in China. In the Soviet Union there was the same sequence of events—the destruction of the Universities in conquered territory, the migration from the scorched earth area into the hinterland, the determined effort of students to continue their studies in their own transplanted universities or in others. Again, as in China, they realised that their greatest contribution to their country's need was in fitting themselves for trained and specialised leadership.
The Channel for Relief
Today World Student Relief exists, organisationally speaking, with a world headquarters in the neutral country of Switzerland, and with affiliated administering committees for student relief in London, Chungking, New York and Stockholm. An I.S.S. committee in Christchurch co-ordinates the work of the local committees in the four N.Z. University centres. Amounts raised so far are Otago, £250; Canterbury, £550; Auckland, £170; Wellington, £30.
Your Part
If you want human beings to work with, shoulder to shoulder in other countries in the years ahead, you'd better start rescuing some of them now. The Executive has suggested to the I.S.S. Committee that it is rather too late in the year to run a successful Work Day; but that, in collaboration with Training College, we might run a good Sunday night Benefit Concert. More details will be available later.
Starting from today, July 27th, every student of Victoria College will have an opportunity to give to World Student Relief. The most you can give is the least they deserve. Decide now what your contribution will be and have it ready for canvassers when they approach you. If you do not meet a canvasser, there will be a Fund Box in the Cafeteria. If every student gave 2/- that would mean £110 for Victoria. Will you respond?
What Your Money Will Do:
For Chinese Students:
Food: £4/10/0 will support a Chinese student for a month.
Clothing: £6 will buy a cotton padded garment for winter.
Health: 6/- a month will provide soya bean milk for Chinese students threatened with tuberculosis. £4/10/0 will supply for a month a kerosene pressure lamp around which forty Chinese students can study.
Scholarships: £61 will provide a National Reconstruction Scholarship for a specially selected student.
Student Centres: £304-£760 will operate for a year one Student Centre with facilities for bathing, recreation, reading, self-help.
For Prisoners of War and Internees:
Books: £1/12/0 will buy from one to six books which will bring new hope to discouraged student prisoners and will enable many of them even to obtain their degrees while behind barbed wire.
Study Materials: 6/- will supply the notebooks and paper required by a prisoner of war for six months.
Music: 6/- will buy a phonograph record which will bring entertainment to more than 2,000 mentally weary student prisoners.
For Other Students in Europe and Russia:
Food: £3 will supply condensed milk for a Russian student for a year.
Living Expenses: £8/5/0 will provide tuition, board, lodging, and clothing for a refugee student in Switzerland.
Health: £1/12/0 will buy 6 ounces of quinine sulphate for Russian students.