UNIVERSITY REFORM.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1668, 7 February 1913, Page 6

UNIVERSITY REFORM.

Sir,—l should like, if I may presume to dose, to help strike home the note struck by Professor Arnold. Wall in his interesting and instructive article published in your columns this mornng. - -The reports of the University Senate must have brought reforming optimists' daily to the brink of despair; the cynics must have discovered themselves justified; the -humorists must have seen topsyturvydom catherine-wheeling in luscious circles. -And yet, if reaction, contradiction, arid the process of reeling and writhing to nowhere and back, again aro discouraging from some points of view, they are certainly less dangerous as they be-' coine more obvious. One cannot .doubt that Professor Wall has helped .those of,5 - our readers who did not follow the debates in Auckland to appreciate tho attitude of the' Senate towards its own very nets, • towards' University education,' and towards the University professors. Small, doses of reform from within. the Senate/ cannot now bo regarded by any reasonable person as a solution of the University problem. The fight must'lie won outside, and the war is one first of extermination. The moral of Professor W'all, I take it, is this, that the gods, having, driven the Senate mad, must mean to destroy it. It is cheering to see a Canterbury College professor, take his place in the Wellington battle-line. , The Victoria College professors have done so much persistent and courageous fighting, in a cause which can mean to them personally nothing but hard knocks in.the beginning, and increased work and' responsibility at the end of the-day, that so trenchant an ally from another centre will help to assure the public that the keenness of-the leaders in Wellington is not merely the giddy 'enthusiasm of mis-spent youth.—l am, etc., •'.-■'» .1 ■ K , F. A/DE LA MARE. February A . ■