If I had to write an editorial, I would probably proceed as follows (assuming Victoria College has not changed after 1943).

There is at the moment an invasion on in Europe, and the murder, fire and passion of this world arc there. If the murder and the fire and the great dreams are there they cannot be here.

And that is no paradox, for it is not only the men that are away here, it is also the capacity to desire, and to dream. Those great enthusiasms that live in a people are not expandable like gasses. They can be placed and shifted. They can be shifted from the country to the town, and they can be shifted from the town to the battlefront. When they are shifted to the battlefront they are not here. The ideals have moved. Because they are at the front it is less possible even for us left here, to have ideals. We grow duller, less noble. And that is no paradox.

Presented to you here is Victoria's 1944 backwash; let us call it that. Contributions from those who have left the College or already graduated from an undue proportion. And of what there is the flame burns low. There is maybe no flame, and there is certainly no flame if we compare the little smouldering here with the conflagration in the distance.

Presented to you here, however, are many pieces worth reading, informative, interesting, and some of solid merit. And it is better that this collection should be published, that for Lhe writers left here the coma should not be too smothering, and that for the readers left here the void should not be too haunting.

There is not a total void, at any rate; there is still thought and feeling, there is still sincerity here.

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And in other countries, in England for instance, there are remarkable new movements in literature in the offing. Unfortunately, these movements are not such as are bred in Universities. Their principal traits are generosity, adventure and magic, and their origin is the most primitive urges.

Even some of this has perhaps precipitated in Spike 1944. It is for the reader to judge. It is that, at any rate, he should search for, no battle cries and no politics.