PLUNKET MEDAL CONTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 153, 30 June 1936, Page 8

PLUNKET MEDAL CONTEST

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Without venturing to dissent from the judges' decision in the Victoria College Elunket Medal contest held on Saturday evening last, may I say that I find it quite impossible to view with satisfaction the reasons given for arriving at that decision. One judge stated that he had always thought the test of oratory to be ( its effect upon its hearers, then went on to refer to the headings of an alarming list of technical requirements, which he frankly confessed he did not understand. Another of the judges made a point of factors which seemed to be purely incidental to the delivery of an oration and not at all essential to its effect — such as a speaker's bearing, his movements about the platform, .and so on. The inference could not be avoided that the total effect of a speech was of smaller significance than a meticulous observance of a fixed physical ritual which an audience, if it were at all interested in this parade-ground theory of oratory, would not discern except upon a searching and over-particular analysis. The method revealed was such as, in another application,-would

deny the credit of a knock-out to a boxer because he had not brought particular muscles into play.

Might I suggest that such a flexible and universal art as oratory can be brought under fixed rules only at the cost of an orator's right to impress his audience by such method as will best impress them. There is reason to believe that those eminently successful orators, Hitler and Mussolini, achieve their most telling effects simply by expressing themselves in whatever manner suits their feelings at the moment. Outside of the pulpit and certain departments of politics, there are few orators available for enrolment as Plunket Medal judges, and I take it that the appointment of three men prominent in varied spheres of activity is designed to overcome this disability; but in any case the appointments might be expected to give a very representative point of view. Three such judges should be able to obtain from their combined impressions as members of the audience a pretty fair idea of how the audience generally has been affected by the orations. Yet the standards of judging enunciated on Saturday evening savoured strongly of the pedagogic. The speakers were (apparently) marked most minutely according to a scheme that (so it seemed) took little account of each speech as a whole or the audience as a whole, and only with difficulty escaped taking notice of the colour of the contestants' hair and the character of their attire. With due deference to the judges, I suggest that it is their own impressions rather than the mechanics of the speeches that should have been marked.

The critical analysis of an oration can be indefinitely elaborated, and something characteristic alone of the entire effort is lost at each stage of the process. It is like dissecting a human body to find the life in it. The revelation that some such process was employed on Saturday evening left the feeling that, however correct the judgment may have been, its correctness was due rather to inspiration, and did not need consideration of the Artificialities that evidehtly protracted the deliberations of the judges. The opinion is common, I believe, that there were two other speakers besides the winner to either of whom the medal might with equal justice have been awarded. My criticism'is provoked by the fact that, to the surprise of many, one of these speakers, a very strong contestant, was \ not even placed.

If I may mention another point of criticism, it is the remark of one judge that a Plunket Medal speaker should not derogate from the character of the "man or woman of note in history" taken for subject This would exclude from Plunket Medal material some of the most important and interesting personages in history; and the rule is not one generally observed by biographers. , "De mortuis nil nisi borium" is a very good motto for use in respect of private persons, but, traditionally, it has no application to people whose I doings affect the interests of the community at large. If I remember rightly, the winner of the medal this year did not entirely praise his subject, Marie Antoinette.—l am, etc., AUDITOR. Interruption of a Plunket Medal oration is an unusual occurrence, writes "P," but while a V.U.C. student was speaking on Saturday evening there was an interruption from the floor. The student "dealt with the interjector in fine oratorical style without losing the thread of his discourse." But afterwards the suggestion was made that the interjector had planned to help the orator and to~ "influence the judges." "P" hopes that, in justice to everybody, the interjector, "who is unknown to students," will make it known that the interjection was made with no such intention. "P" and other students are convinced that the prepared speefch was not of a character to gain by'interruption. The student who was speaking has a skill in debate not needing such external' aid.