Hoardings. University Standards.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20918, 27 July 1933, Page 8

Hoardings.

University Standards.

The Woolston protest against the City Council's licensing a hoarding at the corner of Oak street and Ferry road is fully justified. The council had previously allowed one to be put up and then, moved by strong local agitation, had caused it to be taken down. There was no reason to believe that public opinion had changed; no new reason in favour of the license was brought forward, except the two very silly ones upon which we commented a few days ago. When the council came to decide on the committee's recommendation, there were two petitions before it, one in favour of the 'license, another, much more numerously signed, against it; but the council ignored the weight of past and present evidence and granted the license. At a public meeting last night residents of Woolston resolved to ask the council to revoke it and to grant no further permits, while Cr. Archer's suggestion that they should seek an injunction, if denied, was greeted with applause; but it is to be hoped that Woolston will not be forced to seel: an extreme remedy, which it might fail to obtain. The case now stands so clear that the council cannot decently refuse to do what it has done once before, even if it must appear a little ridiculous to itself [ and to ever., body else. It must call back the license, or arrange for it to be surrendered, because it is better to wobble into the right than to be wilful in the wrong. And wilfulness will begin to resemble shocking tyranny if 110 heed is taken of an emphatically expressed local j wish and loca] right to be spared vulgarisation. But the council will | always be perplexed, it will always be making queer decisions and mischievous ones, until it takes Cr. Archer's advice, given last night, as it was some years ago during his term as mayor. He said at Woolston that the council and citizen. 1 ; should

have the courage to do away with hoardings, and that is the very simple truth oi' it. The council at present tries to draw an almost impossible distinction between residential areas, in which it will not permit hoardings, and business areas, in which it will. Here and there the distinction may be valid, but it does not .erve the purpose. Hoardings hi business areas and hoardings in residential areas c Tweedledum and Tweedledee in ugliness. There is no reason on earth why what is considered a disfigurement among houses and gardens should be considered an adornment or at least a tolerable infliction among shops and offices. For AI2UO a year—the amo.. ' credited to license fees in the new estimates—the council may disembarrass the city, to say nothing of itself.

Professor Sinclaire. in a letter printed this morning, rightly objects to Dr. Haslam's statement in an address to the Canterbury College Graduates Association that the standard in English universities is " im- " measurably higher" than in the universities of the Dominions. Indeed, it seems reasonable to conclude that Dr. Haslam said more than he meant to say; for he surely would not argue that the standard of work in English provincial universities is any higher than, for instance, in the New Zealand university. In some subjects, including philosophy, the classics, and modern languages, Oxford and Cambridge may have higher, but certainly not " immeasurably " higher, standards. The superiority of the training given by the two older universities, whether the comparison is with other English universities or with universities in the Dominions, lies not in scholarship but in something less easy to define. It has been well said that Oxford and Cambridge are the only places in the world where a man can have his cake and eat it; for the years spent there in activities as pleasant as they are inconsequential are valuable even if the final result is a pass degree. Which is merely a way of saying that Oxford and Cambridge are something more than universities in the modern sense of the word.