VICTORIA COLLEGE CHRISTIAN UNION

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2463, 17 May 1915, Page 2

VICTORIA COLLEGE CHRISTIAN UNION

STUDENT MOVEMENT. At the fortnightly meeting of the Victoria University College Christian Union, held in the University Gymnasium on Saturday waning} Miss I. Wilson, 11.A., travelling secretary for.the Student Movement in New Zealand, addressed a representative audience on the subject of the work of tho Worldwide Student Christian Movement in the present crieis) and of tlie responsibilities which lie before it in the near future.

The movement had grown up, she pointed out, to (supply that type of leader which tho normal University (/milling did not in itself produce the leader inspired, not merely with military or political ideals, but with tho higher Christian ideals. In 25 years considerable progress had been made; and the great World Conference held at Lake lUolionk, U.S.A., two years ago, at whi<sh 40 different nations were represented, liad expressed the opinion, in reviewing these years, that there at last was a movement that spread wider than national boundaries, and went deeper than national differences, and would ere long make a, large contribution towards the solution of tho great international, problems. Now, war has out across these hopes, and all that the movement had stooa for seemed to be negatived. Yet the movement was finding a, place and filling a need in tho new' situation, and perhaps would be the only international organisation to survive the conflict, On the continent, the various movements were keeping up communication with their members at the front, supplying them with necessities and comforts, and by. the circulation of suitable literature were keeping before tho men the ideals for which the movement 6tands. Even in Germany, where 45,000 students were actually in the firing lino, weekly communication was being kept up with them, and copies of their pamphlets arrivmg in England through neutral States, indicate the thoroughness with whioh the situation has been met. In Switzerland, help is being rendered to hundreds of destitute students who are stranded there as the result of the wax; while France was taking the lead in developing the work in boys' schools, and so providing for tho perpetuation of the work in the next student generation. Our own. corner at home had done nobly, both in the numbers it had sent to the front —leaders -as well as members—and also in the invaluable assistance it had been rendering in innumerable practical ways. But the greatest work' lay in the future. The call would come at the end of the war for volunteers in the gigantic task of social reconstruction. Would the movoment be ready to undertake the task? The present state of affairs had come about beoause material forces are more easily organised than spiritual. Commercial ana political interests' have control of a vast and perfected machinery, which can be very rapidly set in mntioft. It takes but a few days to mobilise armies; it might take a century to reason a nation into right thinking. What is necessary is a regimentation of the Christian forces. The Churches lack this command because they do not act concert-' edly, and with quick and united effort. Here the student movement may lead by showing the value of discipline and concerted action as distinct from individual effort. Disunity, national barriors, limit the Churches. The movement has not this limitation; and so may point tho way towards such a correlation of international forces .as may be in the best interests of the world as a whole.

Was it arrogance, or was it a farseeing faith, asked the speaker, that 'helped us look forward towards- auch a prospect, and work for it? Our best days lie before us. And there never had been so great a challenge to our faith in God.