VICTORIA COLLEGE REVIEW

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 8, 4 October 1941, Page 14

VICTORIA COLLEGE REVIEW

“Spike, 1941,” the Victoria University College Review (Wellington: . V.U.C. Students’ Association). Thoughts of war, and post-war. reconstruction, are the constant theme of Victoria University College's 1941 Review. Practically everything in the prose and verse is critical of the system which is taken to have brought about the war. and looks forward to a new order in the days to come. This is not a new feature of university writing, but it has become intensified and somewhat crystallized in “Spike 1941.” The authors are presumably among those who have to make the greatest sacrifice of till’in the struggle, and they appear determined that future generations will not be called on to die in international warfare. The solutions offered are unanimously radical, but this, too, is no new thing for "Spike.”

In general the thought, is better developed than the literary style. There are pieces of fine phrasing, and passages of choice English, but these are not sustained as are the thoughts they seek to convey. The verse maintains a clarity often lost by exponents of modern ism. The prose varies from beautiful description to fairly bald exposition of political theories, but like tlie verse it never loses its clarity. It reveals strong influences, but nearly all of it shows promise of talent, which will mature through those influences to a style of its own.

The photographic work is also of high standard, which perhaps could have been improved on by more careful printing.