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The Spike or Victoria University College Review September 1927

Post Prandial

Post Prandial.

We sat and talked together of times past.
That is all old men can do when they grow old.

—"Puck of Pook's Hill."

It was with something of a shock that I realised the other day that it will soon be ten years since first my diffident foot trod Victoria's halls. Ten years, and so much has happened in them. Years of marriage, of begetting babies, of worldly success, of the dimming of that fine flame which was within us when we sang with heart and voice those lines of de la Mare, and in thought turned our faces towards the rugged way of learning. There was splendid promise amongst us them, men of concentrated effort who must surely make the history of this country other than what it would have been, men of ideals with the whitest of faith and compelling belief in the possibilities of democracy. And the world seemed to be waiting its conquest by the graduate or even the undergraduate mind. So we went forth into the streets of cities, met the first shock of the big battalions and were defeated. What had seemed so clear on the hill-top was now blurred by nearness, the great sweep of the magnificent canvas had grown with approach until our eyes were filled with one paltry daub of paint. We were taught to unlearn our learning. We found deep prejudice and suspicion of the university man until we concealed our origins. And finally we grew to accept the economic estimate of success, and set our eyes on banking accounts and share lists, and motors and golf clubs.

Success came so easily to some. Quite obviously, a world which was willing to reward so largely the less learned and the merely shrewd among us was scarcely worth the labour of reforming. And so we slipped into the place of the generation which had died in France and Gallipoli, and on the hot plains of Sinai. There was a philosophy of defeat amongst us. We confessed our inability to alter the existing structure, we faintly despised those who had more faith. We recognised that great page 9 inert monster the populace, but had nothing to give it. Our training had erected too many barriers between the ordinary mind and our own. Our casual acceptances were unintelligible to those around us. Their reception of opinion as fact, and their laborious reasonings from imperfect premises left us slightly scornful. And as we learnt more of public life and saw the riggings, the miserable compromises which marked it, we lost our last illusion which was that our public life, though stupid, was clean. Wordy idealism as a mask for self-interest. Frank greed Haunting as its banner "New Zealand First." State creation and protection of monopolies. A nation which at one and the same time passed legislation to give preference to Motherland goods, and to wring higher prices out of Motherland buyers. An Upper Chamber bullied by Bell. A Lower Chamber in which self-satisfaction oozed and opposition was a pale wraith. A muddle-headed Labour Party taking its stand upon imperfectly understood principles. These things we saw. And our eyes went back to banking accounts and share lists and motors and golf clubs. Besides, some of us had wives, and they wanted to play bridge.

It had all been so different in those years that had faded. We had reckoned on opposition, but we had never thought of indifference. In our visions we had seen long and exhausting battles, mighty clashes in which we were prepared for misrepresentation, for martyrdom perhaps. But always there had been the little band of believers which in later years would grow until the hilltops blazed with the truth of our warnings. Always there had been someone to signal our belief to some other solitary watcher. And to find not merely ignorance but apathy, that was too much. Resolutely we turned to the reduction of our handicaps and the acquiring of a taste in wine.

There is no room for the university man in New Zealand. Not if he wishes to do any more than fill his social niche. The country has a horror of theorists. What is more, it suspects every graduate of being a theorist. And undoubtedly the university is to blame, for it has turned loose on the world many men who were not fit to have degrees. But it is a paradox that a country which talks of education more than any other nation in the world should be so distrustful of its highest product. It is poetic justice that our system of education should sharpen the wits of the ordinary man sufficiently for him to discover the foolishness of the Bachelor of Arts. But I do not think that the whole blame rests with the university. I can find a big reason for the present position in the low standard of the intellectual life of the Dominion. Our conception of education is wrong. We have never thought of it as something which educates. Half the employers in New Zealand consider that it is something which should save them the trouble of training their apprentices. There is nothing more dangerous to a nation than a large class of half-educated people. And we have them in abundance to-day.

—C.Q.P.