Castro Castigated

"Should Castro be Damned?" Most students did not seem to care. Mr Max Riske, the adjudicator for the Debating Society's last debate, summed the evening up as "the worst debate I have ever heard."

It was deadly. Usually provocative speakers such as Mr O'Brien Heading for the affirmative) and Trotskyite Mr Gager (leading for the negative) padded through irrelevant material. Miss Younger added little else to the debate: from her argument Salient understood that Castro should be damned because he was abolishing Father Christmas. Miss Frost, in her pleasantly assured platform manner, argued for the negative, outlining Castro's social reforms.

From the floor came a multitude of boring repetitive speakers. These did not include Mr Moriarty, who justified his negative attitude by showing how unwelcome Castro would be "down there"; or Miss Boyle and Mr Henderson who analysed the political implications of the question. But the atmosphere of the evening was reflected in the tedious interjection "Don't damn him—I like his beard!"

"And yet I fear this nostalgia too. Again, a man must not be entangled. A man must move freely, without these trailing tendrils of cobwebs blinding his eyes, or tying his heart. They talk about the slavery of the senses. These are nothing compared to the slavery of the heart. All Ireland for me, is in and about Rathkeale. A dead, lousy, flea-bitten, snoring pig of a town that I cannot think of without going soft as a woman."