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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 4, No. 8. July 16, 1941

Debate Flags

Debate Flags

Friday July 4th, was American Independence Day (for the uninitiated, independence from England, not from Wall Street). It was also the day on which the Debating Society met to decide on whether. "New Zealand Should Hitch Its Wagon to the Star Spangled Banner."

Frankly it must have been one of the poorest debates the Gym has seen, or should we say, heard. Dennis Hartley opened by saying that he had always wanted to be an American citizen; the U.S.A. was the centre of culture, and had a future, whereas Europe was decadent. His speech was not bad, but was spoilt by some blabber about racial affinity, that sounded as though it came straight from Dr. Rosenberg. Lindsay Nathan led the opposition with a disjointed tirade against the American people. The only rational part of his collection of words was the point that New Zealand was on the brink of building a national culture, which would soon be assimilated if we became a 49th state. Bert Foley backed up Dennis with a good speech on a difficult subject. He took the defence view, and advocated a Pacific bloc against Japan. This brought Dave Castle to his feet with the warning that such an insult towards a friendly power was contrary to the Emergency Regulations, and made Bert liable to twelve months. Stuart Devine seconded Lindsay with a speech showing the lustful degradation of the American people by jitter bugging, drugs, necking, petting and their hypocritical attitude towards contraception.

In Short.

When the motion was thrown open to the house we had one of his best speeches from Jim Winchester, who showed us that there were two Americas—the have and the have-not. We were treated to an excellent satiric description of flag-saluting by Gurth Higgin; a plea for Federal Union by Johnny Cope; a prayer for Socialism led by Pat Hildreth and echoed by the wish for union with the U.S.S.R. by Jacko. Hal Grieg gave possibly the only really sincere speech of the evening and Dave Castle showed us that three months could not alter his dialectical spirit.

Neither Dennis nor Lindsay had anything to say in their summing up, which was probably fortunate. Mr. Evan Parry placed the speakers as follows: Foley Higgin; Hartley; Greig and Cope.

It was Terrible!

Let us not mince words. If we can't do better than at this debate, we really have no right to ask outside people to give up an evening to judge us. Let this debate act as an interesting controversial, subject, lesson. Successful debating demands properly prepared speeches from the set speakers at least, and co-operation from the audience; there is no short cut of "muddling-through."

"Stormbird."