Plunket Medal Rules.

Plunket Medal, "Rule 4, reads:—

"Each competitor shall be allowed 12 minutes, and the subject of his discourse shall be some man or woman of note in history"

A loose interpretation of the expression "in history" has permitted competitors to take for their subjects living persons, upon whom history cannot rightly be said to have passed its judgment. A looser interpretation of the expression "of note" has resulted this year in a competitor winning with a subject concerning whom the judges confessed that they had never heard. The circumstances that Don Passos (or whoever it was that wrote the article which the winning competitor so ably recited) considered John Reed worthy of note does not seem sufficient to constitute this person "some man or woman of note in history." nor does it serve entirely to allay the suspicion that he was just a second-rate Yankee reporter. Has the Committee of the Debating Society such difficulty in obtaining speakers that it cannot afford to give a little attention to the standards of the Contest?