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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 9. August 10th 1949

Pink Blinkers?

Pink Blinkers?

A confirmed socialist sees everything as his socialism wishes him to see it and the result is an essay similar to that of Mr. Winchester's. The facts are all presented as though they tell the history of the spectre of the University Red when in fact they tell the history of the spectre of the University radical. New a radical is a very different person from a redical. Hilaire Belloc is a radical. He is not a socialist. The distinction is quite clear but not to the socialists, not even to those as well read as Mr. Winchester for they believe that the only radicals are socialists. It is true that there are a few who know that this is not a fact, that there are radicals in politics and economics who are not socialists but not only are they dismissed as wrong, they are ignored and refused attention. There are few ivory towers more impregnable than those of the socialists who are so firmly convinced of their righteousness that their zeal shames those others who have many things more valuable and realistic to say. Mr. Winchester is therefore able to write an essay in which radicalism and radicalism are mixed with only a sneaking suspicion that he is deceiving anybody, least of all himself. A curious but unenviable position.

Not that this essayist is unique in his refusal to view facts as facts and his method of argument; Writers in Salient, minor socialists in the People's Voice and journalists in newspapers use the method of argument by inference. It is only that the socialists use it most actively at a University where such arguments should be ineffective that is so surprising. Even this essay gives me more right to make a statement as dogmatic as Mr. Winchester's. It is not aimed to substantiate in every detail such a statement but advances some reasons which enable me to make it, and does not expect an illogical inference from a carefully selected collection of deeds salted with a great deal of emotion.

Socialism may grow and capture the imagination of the students. It will not do so because it is true.

"Veritas."