A violent world

Saturday morning, official opener Walter Nash spoke on "modern trends in politics." He had much to say about the generosity of the 21 gun bankers who floated the Martial Plan; about what a pity it was that we could not raise the living standards of the overpopulous colonial races; and finally, about how the menace of communism should cure the pacifism of young woolly idealists. He quoted awesomely from Vogt's vicious "Road to Survival." He indignantly denied that Britain's hand in Malaya and Burma was unclean: "Mr. Smith gets his facts from a different place from where I do." ("Hear! Hear!").

Training Coll's Walter Scott gave us his opinion of "modern literature" that evening. He deplored the tendency' in our society towards a standardised "culture." He attacked the Hemingway school, full of violent passions and actions—"written about sick minds for sick minds" and "ful-filling the same satisfactions as pulp sex for a more sophisticated audience."