ENGLISH SECTION
A foreword
By—
Mv. R. Ahmed B. A. B. T.
(on behalf of the Editorial Board)
The publication of a school periodical by the pupils of this school was a pre-war contemplation. It has materialised into a post-war reality. This big gap needs a word of explanation.
The Great World War II having brought the forces of aggression to the very doors of Assam put the whole social structure out of gear, and peaceful social life was thrown into a state of anarchy, confusion and un-rest.
Great scarcity of essential food-stuffs, extremely high prices of every commodity coupled with very heavy demands by the Defence forces put on the resources of this small province brought the middle class people to very acute financial distress. As such the struggle for existence having turned out to be extremely keen and tough much of the intellectual and sentimental side of out look of the Intelligentia had to be sacrificed. The pursuit for intellectual thought and cultural expressions was superseded by a pursuit for bread and butter and a bare physical existence became the ambition of every life. No doubt, those days of awful anxiety will live long as a bitter memory in the mind of man.
Over and above these, there was a tremendous scarcity of paper without which the normal course of the educative process in all schools terribly suffered. Paper became more valuable than precious pearls. Even now the scarcity of paper has not totally disappeared and we had to think thrice before we decided to undertake this work. If for scarcity of paper we should have failed to publish this paper it would be taken as one of the many blessings of war many of which we still continue to enjoy but none we would like to cherish. Probably we are going to live in a better world.
Thanks to the untiring efforts of some upper class boys of this school that we have been able to publish the first printed periodical from this institution. Inspite of great financial hardships through which most people are even now passing we presumed to tax the guardians by imposing a compulsory subscription of two annas per month on each pupil of the school. This was, of course, done with the consent of the guardians and the approval of the school authorities. We can confidently assure the guardians that this contribution by their sons and wards will not be & waste. This will undoubtedly help the boys to take an active part in a literary vocation which for some of them will be a great asset in future life. The importance of boys taking part in literary activities cannot be to strongly emphasised and we are sure this will be realised by every guardian that literature is the richest heritage of every nation all over the world. It is through lite-
