Understanding the Facts

"IT is Best that we Don't Know everything," said a woman to me on the cable-car, "for we might become fainthearted." We had been discussing the B.B.C. Broadcasts. I said nothing but, perhaps irrelevantly, thought of Adler's remark, "Man knows much more than he understands." This remark has probably more truth than Adler intended. It is obvious at the present time, for instance, that we are influenced not by facts but by our interpretations of facts, or, more particularly, by the interpretations the newspapers, radio and other conditioning influences choose to give us. Maybe the woman, who spoke to me, believed that she had, of her own accord, reached the conclusion that it was better for certain horrors and disturbing truths to be hidden from us in order to preserve our morale, but more probably she unconsciously assimilated the thought from the newspapers or the like. This stimulation and exploitation of knowledge but partly understood is the propagandists' principal weapon.

During the last war the expression "C'est la guerre" became the popular excuse for anything ranging from exorbitant food prices to Sadistic cruelties, but apparently it was not overworked twenty years ago, for to-day objections to restrictions upon civil and academic liberties are still met by the all embracing phrase, "but you must expect that in time of war." Admittedly we don't know all the facts, but now that we are actually in the conflict, our immediate concern is not so much with the reasons for the war but as to whether or no the war is to be used as an excuse for suppressing social and economic principles which men like Harry Holland fought to establish. It is about time we stopped responding to emotive words such as "communist" and "fifth columnist," and began to think out our own opinions, for if it subversive to think why are we at University?

What we must realize and what up to the present most of us have ignored, is that at University we no longer have academic freedom, and that therefore we must make that freedom for ourselves by continuing to think or in some cases beginning, which is a harder process. To-day, it is an anachronism to speak of "art for art's sake" for it is part of our everyday outlook to expect both literary and artistic endeavour to be primarily an expression and symptom of the time, yet there are still those who regard the University as an institution of learning for learning's sake, and that the problems of the outside world must be excluded. This type of thinking is on a par with the Wellington Tramways impression of Victoria College as a disseminator of "culture," for whatever "culture" the students gain is of their own finding and at the expense of examination work.

In all New Zealand University Colleges the students are not cut off from the community but are part of it. Victoria College depends upon its part-time students for its very existence, and the majority of these students come to University solely for the purpose of improving their economic position; generally they find their "culture" elsewhere. Yet these same students allow themselves to be fooled into thinking that questions relating to war and politics do not concern the University, and therefore are page 27 willing to acquiesce in the shackling of academic freedom. If the student is to be of any use to society he must understand or at least know the limitations of that society. As T. S. Eliot says. "We require much general knowledge in order to see the limits of our particular ignorance." Our "particular ignorance" will not decrease so long as we cling to the skirts of ivory-tower knowledge and continue to accept interpretations of the world outside which are manufactured by those, whose interest it is to stop us asking questions. Surely those who are expected to do and die can be permitted also to reason why?

M.S.S.