United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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J T WAS December and a cold night—the kind of night for a fireplace, low, mellowed lights, a few friends and the easy luxury of deep, leathered chairs. I knew it would be a night of reminiscence and good talk and had prepared for it by placing an extra supply of logs near the fireplace and mixing the drinks to a smooth finish. Fairy MORTEM), That was the setting then, five of us in all— old comrades of our crackling and spirited college days—gathered in a comfortable, in¬ timate arc around the fire. The men, hands in pockets and slouching deep in their chairs, were stretched out long across the carpet. The women, fingering cigarettes, were curled up cozily in their places. It had been a long time since the five of us had been together. We had finished with initial pleasantries. Each of us, in the retelling, had condensed a year of living into five or six minutes of con¬ versational time. We had mentioned current topics, deplored the outcome of the recent civic elections, touched upon the casual events of our day-to-day life. Easy, gentle conversation, preliminary to the deeper pleasures of talk about younger days. Inevitably we eased into the theme. Tales about professors and students and the char¬ acters we knew; little, insignificant details, which made one wonder at memory, came out. Warm anecdotes about college drama nights, about dances, about all night crammings for English exams. Melancholy rememberings of the idealism of our youth. It was a close, a real and a personal world we were in that night, soft and cherished, like all gone and half for¬ gotten things. We talked, it seemed, without care or notice of time, for hours. It was while we were recalling and musing about those great, abandoned principles with which each of us had at one time been fired, that we really became aware for the first time that night, of one another; and each of us sud¬ denly became aware of himself. David Hal- land: Visions of furious brown hair, and hand thumping out the rights of the common man to a just share in the world’s goods. The giant voice of Everyman. The great liberator return¬ ed to save the world from a different type of slavery. There he sat, cool, deliberate, im¬ maculate leg over immaculate leg, crossed in luxury. Vice-president of Apex Steel. “Heart Illustrated of Steel” on the banners of the striking workers. There was his wife Lois, cohort of his youth¬ ful battles. Mother of three boys. Undisputed head of the better Winnipeg women. My wife, Janet, and I, both glowing vision¬ aries of a brave, new world—what had hap¬ pened to us? We had settled into comfort with the years. We were listed with the well-to-do. Socially prominent, good citizens, and the edi¬ torial pages of the local dailies would speak well of us at our death. Nothing more. And there was Robert Victor. At college he had found his life in the delicate pages of familiar and obscure poetry. He was the one among us who used to say that he not only saw humanity but felt it. He had made his com¬ promise with life, perhaps not as fully and as successfully as the others, but the compromise had nevertheless been made. He was the man¬ ager of the Winnipeg branch of Manner Ad¬ vertising Agency. But he was the only one of us who had never given up his resentment, had never quite accepted, was never quite resigned to his place in the scheme of things. He had a look about him which comes from a long, inner smoldering—a look of defiance not yet con¬ quered. We always used to say, back in those days, that Robert had the saddest eyes in the whole world. David was the first to articulate the apology that we all felt had somehow become necessary. “It’s all very well to talk about ‘idealism’ and ‘values,’ ” he punctuated the words with a slight scorn, “but the hard and real fact of it is that this happens to be a pretty practical world.” His voice rose a little and lingered on this last phrase, as though he were speaking in meditation. “And while we may want to go around dreaming and living on clouds, we soon enough find out that if we want to get any¬ where, we have to start doing. It’s unfortunate, K 5

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Editorial Notes: E WERE going to write a stirring editorial for this issue, as stirring, that is, as we could make it, but that was some time ago. We were going to write perhaps of the nebulous second front; now we do not believe in the feasibility of such a plan and would instead subscribe to a wholesale transporting of Cana¬ dian, British and American troops to the Rus¬ sian western front. It was in our mind to raise our voice boldly against a certain American Senator (Smith, we think his name is) who twenty-five years ago added his cracked trumpet to the cacaphony emitted by the anti- Wilson cabal, and who recently, being ap¬ proached on the question of an allied council said brilliantly, ‘it’s all that international busi¬ ness again.’ Now we resign ourself to periodic pronouncements of that sort. In fact we have resigned ourself to many things. Humans be¬ ing so imperfect, we have begun to revel in their imperfections. We thought of placing our pen to paper and adding our faint protest or commendation for the dynamic warping of the public conscience. Warping, that is, to particular views. But we have decided against it. Perhaps “Vox” itself should speak. It might be called an entity, a subtle, living thing pos¬ sessing a tone and mood of its own. It might, perhaps, as a journal with a tradition—a jour¬ nal, moreover, breathing a liberal atmosphere not found elsewhere in Canada,—it might very well become an inviolable instrument for the expression of the liberal spirit. Editors might become reverent guardians who colored but never changed either the instrument or the spirit. The magazine might become greater than the editor; it might rule him by the aura of its own tradition. Someday perhaps. Today “Vox” lives through its editors who alter and shape its policy year by year. It is not an altogether undesirable state of affairs. Thus, the voice of “Vox” has actually become the editor’s voice. Elsewhere in this issue we are heard sufficiently to make any additional advocacy inexcusable. We thus set aside our stirring editorial and instead propose a ramb¬ ling chat. H ARVEY DRYDEN, our current affairs mentor, informs us that “Vox” made its debut in the House of Commons a short time ago. Rev. Stanley Knowles, M.P. for Winnipeg North Centre and a graduate of the college, apparently came across a copy of our December issue and finding a certain article to his intere st therein, displayed it to his confreres in the House. We can picture it feverishly passed from hand to hand while the destiny of a nation hangs in the balance. We can picture it, but we’ll never convince ourself. F OR the first time in three years “Vox” ap¬ pears without the prolific handiwork of Steve Otto. Steve’s uncanny skill in any med¬ ium, more especially with the linocut, made him one of the indispensables of the “Vox” staff. Well, not quite indispensable. A glance through our pages this issue will demonstrate how capably Ann Phelps has taken over his work. We welcome Ann to the staff. And we hope that the mellow Gordon Head sunshine has not affected Steve’s vigorous prairie art. W E THINK that the pictures of the famed United-Macalester Conference of 1942 and Mr. White’s commentary will prove interest¬ ing to our American friends. (We say ‘Mr. White’ because he was our Senior Stick. Re¬ spect.) The Conference could hardly have proven more of a success, achieving as it did its purpose of creating the basis for wider view¬ points and more solidly founded understand¬ ing between the American and Canadian groups. Credit is due members of the Faculties of both colleges as well as student organizers for their fruitful efforts this year. Of the worth of the Conference there can be no doubt. One of the men attending it has already become premier of this province. Of course, we don’t expect that to happen very often. Manitoba premiers are too permanent. 4 ND with the thought that what this country needs is more people telling us what this country needs we bow out. 3

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ENbARKER b ' Ann Phelps I admit, that in order to do and to act we have to forget our dreams. But none of us, and you’ll have to gree with this, would have accom¬ plished anything if he hadn’t come down to the world as it is, to the way of life as it exists. It seems that about all a man can do is to hold his own, let alone try to drag humanity along on his shoulders.” li “That’s very true, Dave, and very sad,” Robert returned. We always liked listening to Robert Victor talk. He had a way of putting things. “But I think the great pity of it all is that in order to get any place in this world we have to sacrifice, almost wholly, all the fine and worthy principles of which this world seems to he so very much in need. It’s a con¬ tradiction. But that contradiction comes only when we think of success and accomplishment in terms of ourselves alone. If we were to think and act in the interests of all people, we would never lose those principles—in fact, they would become necessary touchstones, the only motivating forces of our lives. And we lose our sense of appreciation. Appreciation of little things, of just the delicate way that Lois is holding her cigarette just now. We forget, in our mad rush through space and time, to even stop to enjoy ordinary, simple bits of loveliness. Just look at her—now don’t move your hand, Lois,—look at that cigarette and how beauti¬ fully she’s holding it. And watch that thin smoke gracing its way upward. Lovely! How many of us ever stop to notice such things. Very few. We haven’t the time, I guess. We lose our appreciation for that sort of thing be¬ cause we stop cultivating it. I don’t know the Bible very well, but isn’t there something, somewhere about being born again? That’s the way it is when we enter this world of practi¬ cal. We are born again, only this time it’s a far sorrier birth.” Janet interrupted. “Look, Bob, in spite of everything high and fine and all the good ends towards which we might want to strive, in¬ tellectually, I mean, it seems that we soon be¬ come checked by a little incident in that very humanism you’re speaking of. We become checked by human nature. People want to get ahead personally. They want to express them¬ selves. They’s afraid that unless they have some solid references of accomplishment such as a bank account, a good home, a substantial way of living, their lives will have been wasted. It’s man’s apology to himself and his sacrifices to fear. And much as we may dislike it, or say that we dislike it, there it is.” “Bob,” Lois began, “I think what you’ve been saying, when you bring it down to people, people we know, it becomes just so much talk. After all, men just don’t live by principles. People aren’t satisfied with living the good life and going around just appreciating and en¬ joying the little, and, I admit, lovely things in life. Can you, offhand, think of any man who was content to go about wrapped in a cello- phanic idealism, simply for the sake of his ideals and the quaint pleasures of enjoying other people and other things. Now don’t throw Christ up in our faces. I mean some little man, unheard of, unknown. Bring it right down to earth. Well, can you?” Her voice was almost a challenge. Robert paused and thought a moment. “Yes,” he mused, “yes, I can. And if you have the patience and a little time, I think I’d like to tell you about him. He was one of the few men I knew who went about, obscurely, sifting humanity for its little gems.” “When we were very young,” Robert be¬ gan, “our family had a summer cottage on a little island in Lake Ontario. A fair-sized town had grown up there over a period of years, composed, in the main, of city people who liked to idle away the green months in the quiet contentment of just such a community. By 1910, when I was seven years old and my sister Marilyn only five, there must have been about a hundred homes on the island with about four hundred people spending July and August there. The island itself was beautiful, and for children it was Paradise. Tall pines every-