THE COTTONIAN
March 2nd.-Debate : 'This House considers that Olden Day Travel is safer than that of the Modern Day'.
Proposing the Motion : Messrs H. Davies and E. Scott.
Opposing the Motion : Messrs 13. Dwyer and F. Reynolds.
The Motion failed by 30 votes to 4.
M1 larch 10th.- Lantern Lecture : 'With a
camera in the Far East' given by Mr Cuthbert Myatt.
LITERARY AND DEBATING
SOCIETY
THIS has not been a good season for debating. Perhaps it ought to be said at once that there have, in fact, been much worse ones. At its best, this year's fare was very fine indeed ; at its worst it was abysmal. We may profitably confine ourselves to the credit side.
The minutes are revealing in places. Very early in the season it is recorded that Messrs Neale and Martin appeared on opposite sides in a debate on the motion that a speed limit of 50 m.p.h. be. imposed on all roads : we note that Mr Martin treated some of the lesser fry in the automobile world with alliterative disdain-'abominable bubbles', while Mr Neale is reported as slipping very easily into the mood of the evening, one of dignified restraint. We have no means of knowing how accurate this report is and memory serves us very ill, but if the mood of the evening was one of dignified restraint then Mr Neale is just the man to slip into it in the manner described.
A name that appears very often in the minutes is that of Mr Glynn. One of the sights that does stick in the memory is that of Mr Glynn repeatedly uncoiling his 7(i inches from the (lark shadows at the back of the gospel side of the chamber. The
speech that followed this prodigious feat of physical endurance sometimes lasted four of five minutes, occasionally it was only a few words ; either way Mr Glynn was sure of a hearing and usually of some well merited applause. Late in the year, in a debate on Town and Country Life, what looked like being a twenty-minute speech had to be cut short by an anxious chairman, who was concerned to see that the remaining speaker got beyond 'Mr Speaker, Sir !'
Hardly less frequent were the brief and pithy aphorisms of Mr Round. He distinguished himself more particularly in the debate on the motion that Britain should join the U.S.A. rather than the Common Market, but \%-on his best applause for a recondite quotation--off the cuff-from II Kings.
There was a bad outbreak of high seriousness ; unrelieved seriousness ; polemical pamphleteering didacticism of the unendurable kind. And a tendency towards this, even where there were considerable merits in the speaking, marred the efforts of substantial men like Mr McGhee, Mr Duffy, Mr Castille and Mr Mangan. In the Common Market debate, in late October, the Secretary notes that Mr Mangan began by being objectionable ; this no doubt is an accurate assessment of the facts but we can remember no reason for it. Mr Castille we remember treated us to the sort of Castillian tirade that suggested lie was suffering from an acute overdose of E equals MC squared, and that a night at the Palladium might have clone him the world of good. Mr McGhee is accused of proposing this motion-'at length'. Mr Sheridan, on another occasion, seemed over-earnest in his presentation of sonic likely material and Mr Duffy was too much the voice into the microphone to get across first time. These gentleman will all profit from the experience and speak that much better when they realize the difference between the written and the spoken word.