United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 5 text:

The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can’t trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. “The Sphinx,” from which these lines are taken, was the first poem in all editions of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry up to 1904. Emerson’s best bio¬ grapher recently remarked that “many prospective purchasers must have been too dismayed to read further.” Yet these lines illustrate the truth that they express. Our knowledge that a handful of their author’s best poems are among the finest that the nineteenth century produced makes our dissatisfac¬ tion all the keener. Technically unimpressive as these lines are, they have been etched on my memory for years. Never have they seemed more relevant than they are at this moment. Dissatisfaction has ever been the lot of man. Complaint and satire, muckraking and protest are not new to literature, nor are Outsiders. There have been Angry Young Men and Beatniks before. Philip Wylie is tamer than Bernard of Morlaix; Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg seem insipid beside Frangois Villon; and even John Osborne is hardly as savage as Jonathan Swift. Much lite rature of protest that is currently popular on both sides of the Atlantic may be challenged on grounds of technique, even on ' grounds of internal consistency and sincerity. One may deplore the tendency of certain authors and critics to search for an apparent¬ ly masochistic satisfaction in portrayals of human depravity, or to praise as religious or even Christian what is really an attempt to derive aesthetic pleasure from a sense of damnation. But one can only welcome, no matter how painful, effective reminders that this is not the best, of all possible worlds and that we are not the best of men. Many of us can read contemporary literature of protest with detachment and equanimity. Judicial exposures of corruption and deceit disturb us intel¬ lectually, especially when the validity and respon¬ sibility of judicial and quasi-judicial processes themselves seem to be endangered. But we are shocked and pained more than we had ever dreamed we could be by the sudden, overwhelming personal discovery of inadequacies — or worse — in our colleagues, in our friends, in ourselves. It is horrible to discover with Elijah that we are not better than our fathers. Yet even personal disillusionment has its rewards. Pettiness recalls magnanimity. Violently subjective, biased judgments reveal the difficulty and the value of real objectivity and disinterestedness. Hypocrisy, self-deception, and evasion remind us of clear-head¬ ed, courageous candour. Group face-saving points up the inevitability of ultimate personal responsibil¬ ity. We have had experiences that we should hate to relive. But they have been painful and instructive in the degree to which they showed that actions fell short of ideals suddenly revealed in lonely clarity. United College is stronger, better, happier than it was a year ago. May our work this year be a pledge of better work to come. May we never seek comfort in norms. May we never find respectability in numbers. May we never surrender our souls to groups or organizations. May we always be harried by love of the Best. —WALTER E. SWAYZE 3

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jC ocbhavt JH essacje William Faulkner, Nobel prize-winning novelist, recently expressed his confidence in humanity by affirming that out of every failure of the human drama, there arises “always a handful who decline to be convinced by failure, who believe still, that human problems can be solved.” These are not only encouraging words to hear at a time when the voices heard on every side warn us of impending doom. They are suggestive of where our hope lies for the future. Faulkner reminds us of the importance of the few who refuse to yield to despair; of the significance of the handful who do not succumb to failure and who will not admit defeat. He sees this minority as providing the core of resistance to those forces of hopelessness and cynicism which render man helpless. To him, as long as there are those who believe that the prob¬ lems of man can be resolved, the indomitable spirit in man will find a way to establish brother¬ hood and peace. The cynic replies with the retort that this bravado on the part of man is only the futile gesture of those who whistle in the dark to keep up their courage. Man, he says, is doomed to destroy himself by his own wilfulness and stupidity and no expression of confidence in his own ability to resolve his problems offer any real hope. With this we might agree if Faulkner means that man has within himself the resources that will enable him to master himself and his future. Certainly, there is little evidence, from the long record of man’s historic trek on this planet, to inspire confidence in man’s ability to resolve his problems. He has learned in large measure how to master nature. He appears, however, to have learned little about self-mastery, or how to establish a pattern of communal life that would ensure brotherhood and peace. But, if Faulkner means that we believe in man and his ability to yet resolve the problems that beset his common life because we believe that man has been created with a stamp of eternal purpose upon him, and, that he has been set in this world to share its bounties with his brethren, then we could say with Faulkner, that man will survive because it is God’s will and purpose that he should. He will survive and be enabled to establish his domain in brotherhood and peace on this earth because God created him to this end. God will not surrender him to his own self-destruction. God keeps alive in His children the dream of a nobler life and He continually nourishes and strengthens that dream into action by bolstering the purpose and faith of those who will not despair. My sincere hope and prayer is that United College may be the kind of place where you find intelligent grounds for that faith and that hope; the place where you may gain that kind of courage, that will enable you to prevail against all cynicism. May you be numbered among those who remain irreconciled with the prophets of despair and un¬ dismayed by the purveyors of hopelessness. —WILFRED LOCKHART 2

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What is Vox? This question is almost invariably asked by freshmen to United. Vox is actually what its Latin name implies, a “voice.” It is a book which “voices” the activities, accomplishments, creativity, and interests of the students of United College. This year Vox has the unique distinction of “voicing” the completion of the first stage of the long awaited expansion of United. Through the years, our college has gained recognition for scholarship and leadership in the academic community. Although United is an old college, it has always kept its policies keyed to contemporary needs while maintaining constant standards. Now, witl her new building, she symbolizes physically, as well as spiritually, the bond that this college has between tradition and progress. This link is very aptly depicted on this year’s cover, designed by Marion Yagi. Marion has superimposed the new edifice on the old Wesley Hall and has eminating from both structures, the word Vox—the “voice” of student life at United. Not only does Vox serve as a voice, but it also serves as a link between the present and the past. While current issues of Vox are “voicing” the present, older issues are recording United’s past as told through the students. A few years from now, this book will bring back many memories. The answer to the introductory question is that Vox is United’s yearbook, which is published for the students, about the students, by the student s. LOTTIE SCHUBERT, EDITOR. 4