New Speakers' Hooley.

Dear "Smad,"—

Though, we do not wish to interfere with any club's conduct of its own affairs, we feel that new speakers are already sufficiently handicapped without being forced to submit to conditions which reduce a debate to the level of a Billingsgate brawl. We find such terms hardly adequate to describe conditions at the last New Speakers' Debate. Throughout the whole of the first speech, a deafening uproar prevailed, through which the chairman sat with a smirking smile of smug indifference. Blasting of squeakers, slamming of doors, shuffling of feet, and a constant babble of voices were passed unheeded by our casual chairman.

At the conclusion of the speech, we, the undersigned, deeply in sympathy with the speakers and with the four serious-minded members of the audience (of whom we were two), thought it our duty to move a vote of no-confidence in the chairman. This casual gentleman reluctantly put the motion to the meeting, by whom it was carried unanimously. Imagine our surprise when this pocket Mussolini brushed the decision of the audience contemptuously aside, and proceeded with the meeting in defiance of every known democratic principle.

From then on the meeting sounded like the S.C.M. table in the Cafeteria. We had abandoned all hope of hearing the speeches, and were about to make a dignified exit from the meeting when our student, Stalin, made use of a lull in the storm and of his usurped position as chairman, to display feelings of petty animosity and vindictiveness against the only two members of the audience who had been public-spirited enough to protest against the reign of misrule. Referring to us by name, he attributed to us all the disturbance which was so obviously the outcome of his own incompetence. We feel that by making this protest we at the same time clear our own fair name and obtain for new speakers that fair play On which Victoria College has always prided itself.