College Journalism

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 7 (Supplement)

College Journalism

THE DANGEROUS AGE. FTER much youthful plunging, "Canterbury University College Review" knows at length the taste of manflmffSVW hood. It is 21 this issue. And having (&lvk(ffl9 endured so long the indignities of wy/*Sa&m adolescence, it will be modest and blushing no more. Take literary-—~ criticism. While it was still an apologetic minoiy it endured with what meekness it could muster much stupid adoration of Rudyard Kipling. "Yet is he an infinitely small man"—and "The Review will not scruple to proclaim it. The world does not realise that "nine-tenths of what Kipling pub- , I lishes is pure rubbish"; nor, if it did realise that, could it "appreciate the remaining tenth." I So, too, with that Arnold Bennett fellow. On the whole, six shillings spent on him are not illspent; "but one grows, as one reads, more and more vexed at the overbearing, superior, and condescending tone of Mr Arnold Bennett (who is quite a little man, really)." Alfred Noyes, however, escapes less battered. "If one puts aside certain passages, spoilt by extravagance of idea and expression, one can nevertheless find much in Noyes to love and be thankful for." Lucky Alfred! But luckiest of all, Mr G. B. Shaw. "When writing a critical article on Bernard Shaw and his views on any particular subject, one must be particularly careful. . . . Much of what Mr Shaw says, it cannot be denied, is true." Admittedly, however, we write with a grievance. "The Review" has broken its promise. Whether it has forgotten the matter in the excitement of coming of age, or whether it has been warned by the Government of the danger threatening reckless schismatics, it has robbed us of a jov we have been anticipating for seventeen weeks. Where is the second round of the students' Holy War? But for this unpardonable omission, the issue is distinctly good. The verses are no more disturbing than students' verses usually are, while heady plunges into deliberate humour are fewer than we have noticed before. As is fitting in a jubilee number, the reminiscent side is particularly interesting. And finally, there is generous and' appropriate appreciation of the men making history overseas. We congratulate "The Review" on its escajX fi'om youth into the perilous haven of twenty-^me.