PLUNKET MEDAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 26, 31 July 1939, Page 7

PLUNKET MEDAL

ORATORY CONTEST WONBYMR.B.M. O'CONNOR The annual contest for the Plunket Medal was held by the Victoria University College Debating Society in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall on Saturday evening. The medal was won by Mr. B. M. O'Connor, who spoke on Eamon de Valera. Second place was taken by Mr. R. L. Meek (Krishnamurti), and Mr. E. K. Braybrooke (the Earl of Stafford) and Mr. A- LMcCulloch (Edmund Burke) were bracketed in third place. The judges were the Speaker of the House of Representatives (the Hon. W. E. Barnard), Mr. W. E. Leicester, and Miss Irene Wilson. Before presenting the medal to MrO'Connor, Mr. Barnard expressed hia appreciation to the society, for being invited to serve as one of the judgesHe had spent a very pleasant twohours indeed —a much more pleasant time than he usually spent listening to I speakers in the House. He found he ihad little claim to be a judge of oratory, for after listening to so many speeches under compulsion for the last | three years his sense of appreciation iof oratory had become dull and more |or less obliterated. (Laughter.) ! In judging the contest, it had to be j borne in mind all the time that it was a contest of orators, and they had to put other considerations to some ex-. I tent aside. They had experienced some difficulty in deciding, between the I claims of first and second. The claims . of Mr. Meek and Mr. O'Connor had been carefully considered, and- they had decided that Mr. O'Connor was to receive the medal. (Applause.) AUDIENCE APPROVES. When the applause had died down, Mr. Barnard said that apparently their choice was a popular one, and that was gratifying to Mr. Leicester, Miss Wilson, and himself. Mr. Meek took second place, and the judges regarded him as a very close second indeed. To them, his treatment of Krishnamurti seemed admirable, but tested by the standard of oratory, they felt constrained to give way to the Irish eloquence of Mr. O'Connor. For third place, they found it necessary to bracket two of the speakers, Mr. Braybrooke and Mr. McCulloch, and felt that both those gentlemen had suffered from the fact that they had dug too far into history for their respective subjects. However, the judges were very much impressed with the way they had handled their subjects, and there had been no hesitation in placing them. Taste in connection with oratory had changed during the last 100 years or so, Mr. Barnard continued. They were told that Burke was a great orator, but apparently in those days long speeches and flowing periods were indulged in. Modern oratory, he believed, was in- ~- fluenced by the radio, and he would . venture, with all humility, to make the suggestion that the style that was effective over the air was probably the most effective in a contest such as that for the Plunket Medal. Some in the audience might have heard President Roosevelt in his broadcast address recently. From an oratorical point of. view the subject had not appeared to be promising, but actually the speech was very good indeed. s Mr. Barnard said he was not going to attempt to make any comment on the various speakers. They had been asked for some written comment for the college magazine "Spike," and Mr. Leicester had consented to - attend to that. THE WINNER'S SPEECH. In his speech, Mr. O'Connor said that de Valera had paved the way for friendship out of hatred, for peace out of war, and had piloted his country to the goal which insurrection, hatred, and bloodshed could not achieve. He sketched the history of the Irish statesman from the time he left America at the age of two, and mentioned that he had been sentenced to death 'by a courtmartial, but that his American citizenship had saved him. How differently history would have been written, if the sentence had been carried oat—the understanding which existed between England and Ireland today would have been a fantastic dream. If there was one quality of de Valera _ which stood out above the rest, it was his sincerity, and his dominant passion was to serve his country. His ambition was to forget the past, but hope for the future, a love of Ireland, not a hatred of England. The seed he had sown would fructify gloriously in the valleys, of Ireland—a new Ireland for the Irish people. __ In addition to Messrs." O Connor. Meek, Braybrooke, and McCulloch, the speakers and their subjects were: Mr. J. P. Lewin (Kropotkin), Mr. R. W. Edgley (T. E. Lawrence), Mr. F. H. Renouf (Kagawa), Mr. T. Macdonald (Mustapha Kemal), and Mr. N. G. Foley (Lord Rutherford) N .