The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1933. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 117, 20 May 1933, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1933. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the icrong that needs rg/istanc9, For the future in the distavce, And the ■good that we can do.

"The ' development of the true spirit of the University among a people is a good measure of tho development of its soul, consequently of its civilisation." Perhaps in no society can these words of the lato Lord Haldane, one of the most fervent educationists of his generation, be applied rigidly, let alone in a pioneering society like ours, but they contain a profoundly important truth and they serve an ideal at which we may well look closely in this jubilee week of Auckland University College. To-day the College looks back to its founders and foundations, then to the stately building that is the outward and visible sign of its inward and spiritual learning and grace, and then to the future — the expectations and obligations that the unknown holds. When one turns to the first years, one experiences a 'double astonishment, that any community should have had the effrontery to ask professors to start a University in such conditions, and that a staff should have been able to do such admirable work under such a handicap. Accommodation and equipment were grotesquely inadequate. Auckland lacked the tradition of culture that was a marked feature of the two other New 'Zealand cities t|iat then possessed university •institutions, and the staff encountered actual hostility as well as the indifference that must be common in a young and raw society such as Auckland was in the 'eighties. Moreover, they- took up their duties in the middle of a grave economic depression. It is infinitely to the credit of the professors and their assistants that so much was done. Seeds of learning were sown, and in fertile patches flourished. The staff realised that the conditions were vastly different from those of the Old World, and they shaped their programme accordingly. Their ability and devotion gave Auckland a University.

Those early conditions, however, remained a grave handicap to the College. Housed in a block of old wooden buildings, the College was an inconspicuous institution in the city, and it would not bo an exaggeration to say that most Auckland citizens knew no more of it than its bare existence—if so rntfch as that. That it has never taken the prominent place in the community held by Canterbury College and Otago University is due largely to that long obscurity and inadequacy. The explicit promise of a worthy home for the College given before it was founded, was not fulfilled for forty-three years, until the opening of the present Arts building in 1926, and for this unconscionable delay Auckland itself must take a large share of blame. During these years, however, work went on steadily. Generation after generation of undergraduates entered the College, and, leaving with degrees, went out into life to diffuse something at least of the learning and culture they had obtained. Many went far afield, and held their own in the larger world. The roll of distinguished graduates, from which we made a selection yesterday, is impressive. It illustrates a great fact which the more extreme critics of the New Zealand University Colleges have never been able to explain away—that the products of a system which admittedly has serious faults- have been able, to' win so many honours in other universities and to secure and hold so many important positions of various kinds.

There is, however, in this list of distinctiorft a conspicuous weakness that Auckland University College shares with the other University institutions of New Zealand. It has contributed little" to the political life of tho nation. Nor has it produced much in creative literature or criticism. The smallness of our national community provides a better excuse for the second shortcoming than for the first. If in a democracy the products of higher education do not offer themselves for public service, or are rejected when they come forward, so much the worse for democracy. These matters should be considered at this time of jubilee. If a University is to realise Lord Haldane's ideal it must serve every need of the nation. It must provide statesmen and teachers, scientists and philosophers, writers, artists and critics, and adapt higher education to the business and leisure of life. It must walk both on the mountain peaks and in the market place.

In recent years Auckland has witnessed a notable expansion of University activities, and more is planned to bring tho College into closer contact with the life of tho city and the province.. If these plans aro to be put into operation adequately the local community must help. A University College dependent entirely on the State for money does not befit a great and proud city, nor does experience show that such support is adequate. Further, the greater the local backing, the more is a university independent of State control, and the danger of such control is already apparent in this country- Whether the Auckland! University College remains an affiliated' college, or whether some day it grows into al separate university, it must strive for liberal provision in staffing, and • for freedom to develop culture and to express ideas. The vast improvement in tho housing of the College should not- be allowed to obscure the prime importance of the scholarship and personality of the teacher. Great care must bo taken that the high standard set up in the past in the selection of staff is maintained. Only now is the University College, a faithful servant of the public for fifty years, beginning to take something approaching its proper place in the eyes of the community. If the above are given their due weight the College will grow in usefulness, and the recognition that is its due will extend. It should not be an impossible dream to imagine the College a crown upon this city, serving every need of progress and culture, acclaimed here and abroad as a centre of knowledge and that which too often lingers behind knowledge—wisdom.