Victoria College

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 516, 13 May 1949, Page 5

Victoria College

¢ E have not often been happier about a contribution than we are about the article in this issue by Dr. J. C. Beaglehole commemorating the: Jubilee of Victoria College. While it would be wrong to give the College all the credit for producing the writer of that article-ungrateful to his parents and a blindness to all the other influences that have worked on him during the last 48 years — he is the eloquent and generous answer to his own question about the meaning. of Victoria College to the community. It has focussed the light in him and enriched the feeling; made him-in short a truly educated man. If it makes him squirm to have such crude things said about him that is the test of their truthfulness. Of how many of his fellow graduates we could say the same if we knew them well enough we could only guess; but the number does not matter. When a University brings one first-rate. mind to full capacity it brings many more to a point only a little below that, and in those two ways abundantly justifies its existence. But no one really wonders whether Victoria College has given the community a return for its money. No intelligent person ever asks whether knowledge pays. The question Dr. Beaglehole asks is what the College has done over and above the turning out of sometimes eminent, sometimes merely competent, persons equipped technically for public service. His answer will mean more to graduates of Victoria College than to others; will stir them more than it will others; and will mean something a little different to them than he will even wish it to mean to others. But it must be read in his own words. Our sole purpose in this column is to direct attention not merely to what he says but to the manner in which he says it, and to reduce the number of readers who might otherwise miss the deep satisfaction of reading him.