23 MAY 1970, Page 10

The biter bit

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS

Mr Michael Stewart was recently shouted down at the Oxford Union. In 1929 Mr Stewart (then himself an undergraduate) interrupted a debate in which Mr Osbert Lancaster was speaking on duelling, in order to insist that the Society discuss unemploy- ment instead.

I could not stand their senseless chatter.

I bade them talk of graver matter.

The old, I cried, had had their day: If that was all they had to say

I thought they'd better go away,

Some forty years ago.

And youth now waves its idiot banners. They've quite forgot their proper manners. When wiser men of riper years Speak of their well-considered fears They just reply with boos, and jeers: I wonder why it's so.