Free Discussion Club.

The Annual General Meeting was held on May 30th and, after the Secretary had presented a masterly exposition of the Club's finances and the election of officers was concluded, Mr. J. R. Elliott set forth the "Disadvantages of Being Earnest" before a large audience. To "mean well," said the speaker, was bad enough by all odds; to be "worthy" was a shade worse; but to be "earnest" was "too utterly utter." To be sure, every man had his own private code of conduct, but this gave him no authority to force it down other unwilling throats. The speaker went on to deplore the Puritan blight and to proclaim the gospel of "Joie-de-vivre," with appropriate bouquets to Herrick, Omar Khayyam and Swinburne. We were enjoined to enjoy the present, so that in the future we might have a past. Proselytising was trenchantly condemned, reformers were a loathsome creed, and Prohibitionists past description in Parliamentary language. If people wanted to carry out reforms, let them heed the copybook maxim, "Example is more potent than precept." The audience, somewhat dazzled by this display of intellectual pyrotechnics, did not know, in their naive colonial way, whether the speech was earnest flippancy or flippant earnestness. But Mr. Miller scored a decisive point when he declared that if you robbed the Anglo-Saxon of his proselytising you robbed him at the same time of all the joy of his life.

On Friday, June 13th, Rev. J. Newell, M.A., gave a very interesting address on "India" to a disappointingly small audience. Mr. Newell, who spoke from many years' personal experience, told us of Tagore, Sarajini Naidu, C. F. Andrews, Ghandi and the leaders of the Non-co-operative Movement. The withdrawal of Great Britain from India would, he thought, lead to chaos, since the smouldering antagonism of the Hindus and the Mahommedans would blaze out. The Mahommedans were in a minority, and hence strong supporters of the British regime. Miss Katherine Mayo's book on "Mother India" had been subjected to searching criticism, but the speaker considered that it was, on the whole, no exaggeration. Mr. Newell concluded his most informative address with a strong plea that every effort should be made to propagate Christianity among the Indians.