"GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS.,"

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 8, 9 July 1909, Page 8

"GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS.,"

VICTORIA COLLEGE ON THE CARPET. "Is poor Victoria College to be forever tagged with 'Government institution V " asks "Wellingtonian," in a letter to The Post. "I noticed that yesterday somebody was wailing in your columns about the use of tho 'unemployed fund' for the betterment of Victoria College, because it was a 'Government institution,' but I -was glad to see that this small-minded notion had no editorial support from The* Post. The chief misfortune suffered by struggling 'Victoria College is that the people of the Capital, and even the whole Middle University District, persist in regarding it as strictly a 'Government institution,' to be a charge upon Otago, Auckland, and Canterbury, as well as Wellington, Canterbury College and Otago University are not smugly dubbed 'Government institutions' by the people in the south. The people in those districts havo a healthy interest in their university colleges, and do not think that private benefaction should cease merely because the colleges get subsidies from the State. Appeals in the south do not fall on the ears of apathetic people, turning aside with a shrug of the shoulders and exclaiming, 'Government institution.' But in Wellington, the moment some broad-minded folk see an opportunity to do a good turn for a college, which the community has unworthily neglected "(except by sending armies of students for the paternal Government to accommodate at the expense of all New Zealand), somebody raises the thrill cry of 'Government institution.' And it is implied that the subtle Government ib taking a 'rise' out of Wellington by making its subsidy conditional on the allocation of a proportion of the funds for the benefit of Victoria College. It is to be hoped and prayed, fervently, that this littleness of outlook does not represent the general vision of Wellington. Rather tho fact that 'the Cinderella of the colleges' is booked for a little kindly treatment should fctimulate to some snow of gallantry people wlio have been calloub in the past. Cinderella does not deserve to have only a. broadarrow pattern for her clothes. Wellington can surely supply a few sprinklings of moas and lions and 'suprema a tituV from the city'b of arms."