COMPETITIVE ORATORY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 301, 14 September 1908, Page 8

COMPETITIVE ORATORY.

. o .. '■ VICTORIA COLLEGE DEBATING SOCIETY. FOURTH ANNUAL CONTEST. • ' The fourth annual competition by members of the Victoria College' Debating Society, for the mctl.il presented by' his Exccl- . lcncy the Governor for the, encouragement of oratory among the students, was .held in the Concert Room, Toivn Hall, .011 Saturday evening, before a large audience, consisting mainly of the students and their friends. Mr. H. F. O'Leary, president of the Debating Society, was in the chair, and there were also present'the Minister for Education (Hon. G. Fowlds), his Worship the Mayor (Hon. T. W. Hislop), and the members of the Professorial Board. Tho conditions of the competition were that each aspirant for tho Plunket Medal should speak for twelve minutes on a selected man or. woman of note in history, and the audience was constituted his judge. ■ The competitors were: — M. H. Oram, B.A. —"Queen Victoria." D. S. Smith- —"John Hampden;" C; H. Taylor—"Robert Louis Stevenson." J. Mason—"Earl of Chatham." J. M. Hogben—"General Wolfe." E. Annit —"Edmund Burlce." A. M. Salek—"Napoleon Bonaparto." H. E. Evans, B.A—"William III." It will be seen from the above list that not one ■of the competitors was original enough in his ideas to get off. the beaten track; with perhaps two exceptions, "R. L. Stevenson" and "William lll"—and even these have been pretty well exploited, TIIO subjects chosen offered practically no alternative from a mere recital of what, at this time of day, aro now biographical platitudes. Tho speakers could tell their audience nothing new, with the result that there was a danger of the orations degenerating into formal recitations of arid matter. Why does it never occur to these young biographical orators to study — reflectively— such men as Kitchener, Booth, Cromer, whose personalities and achievements arc instinct with tho atmosphere of the presentday world, and extract, from such study something worth hearing, something alive and real. To rovort to tho competition, the speeches delivered ranged from excellent to indifferent, and the audience, had no difficulty in placing Mr. D.'S. Smith ("John Hampden") an easy first with, approximately,. something like 180 marks; Mr. E. Armit came secondwith his oration on "Burke," and Mr. H. E. Evans (" William III") was placed third. Tho last two received, roughly, 130 and 80 marks respectively. _ Mr. Smith's delivery, treatment of his subject matter, and personal force (a magnetic " something " which cannot bo weighed or measured, but which grips tho crowd) were of a high order. In presenting the medal to the winner, the Hon. G. l''owlds expressed the pleasure which ■ it gave him to be present, and referred in high terms to the educative value of such contests. Tho Mayor (Hon. T. W. Hislop) and Professor D. K. Picken also added a word of , encouragement to tho students. '• The previous winners of the Plunket Medal werel9os—Mr. B.- J. Fitzgibbon; 1906— Mr. H. F. O'Leary; 1907—Mr. F. P. Kelly.