The Favourite [unclear: Fails].

There was a wave of [unclear: pleasurable] anticipation when Margaret [unclear: Shortall] began, and she began well, but somehow the grey tale of [unclear: Kemal] Pasha [unclear: disappointed] an audience that remembered the glitter and the sparkle of Sir Basil Zaharoff. Her street scenes, with the man, who changed his hat and the woman who changed her sphere, didn't quite go over; and her notes, which looked like a badly sorted bridge hand on which she had to bill in a hurry, spoiled the effect she should have achieved. It is very uncomfortable for a sympathetic audience when a speaker forgets the speech and has to hunt for what to say next. Mr. Renner, in his summing up, described it as the deadly sin.

Margaret's speech was a disappointment because it was not up to the standard she has set herself in previous years, and there were a great many people present who would have liked her to win. We understand that this was her last contest, and although she has never won the Plunket Medal, she has achieved something, for she has delighted four years of Plunket Medal audiences.

From the gallery Mr. R. L. Meek looked so like he did as [unclear: Mephistopheles in "The Plutocrats," that "Salient", had an uneasy feeling that be might do a conjuring trick at any moment. He began his speech, with the initial applause still echoing through the hall, by saying "The room is very quiet," which was an astonishing remark under the circumstances, and a very poor way to begin a speech. Out of the quiet room (which turned out to be not the Concert Chamber after all) there emerged a medley of concertos, sonatas, and the story of Beethoven, who was badmannered], dirty and stone deaf, and who yet gave the world some of the loveliest music it has ever heard. Ron knew what he was talking about, and what he said was interesting, but it would have made a better essay than a speech. We think, too that the audience would" like him better if they were not completely ignored by him.

From Mr. C. A. Myers we expected better things than we got. He spoke of Garibaldi, delivering what sounded like an extract from the [unclear: Encyclolpedia] [unclear: Britannica] in as monotonous a tone as a wireless announcer reading a weather report. Towards the end he stopped telling us what we all [unclear: learnt] at school, and both his enthusiasm and ours increased. At the very end he reached the crux of his speech comparing the ideals of Garibaldi. Who loved liberty so passionately he would die for it, with the aims of Mussolini, to whom liberty is a dead thing. In this one moment, [gap — reason: illegible] of the twelve. "Salient" thought. "Mr. Myers will probably give an excellent Plunket Medal speech next year."

The words of the judges in 1936 appear not to have fallen on completely barren soil, for Mr. A. I. [unclear: McCulloch] began his speech by explaining very carefully that although [unclear: Raiah] Brooke was not as good a man us he might have been, only the more admirable 'aspects of his character would be referred to. Paraded in polysyllabic splendour the Raiah's virtues left us [unclear: cold]. With a little more imagination and a little less vocabulary Mr. McCulloch could have got far more than he did from his very promising subject.