The Debate Continues to Continue
Most controversies which engage the attention of our curious nation run their course as a fever does. For a week or perhaps a month the partisans on either side cross swords in private or in public, leader-writers and broadcasters, politicians and pollsters and music-hall comedians join in the fray. Bishops make pronouncements, members of the public write to the news- papers, the Oxford and Cambridge Unions record urbanely paradoxical verdicts. Then, all of a sudden, something else crops up and we lose interest in the matter, for all the world like small boys whose preparatory school has been swept by a mania for plasticine or paper darts and who explain, when asked at half-term why this vogue seems to have vanished without trace, " It was only a craze." I cannot remember any controversy which has shown as much stamina as the one about competitive television. It has been going on for months now. It has had an entire number of Punch devoted to it. -It has been conclusively proved by the Roundheads that the introduction of sponsored television will spell a nationwide moral collapse, and by the Cavaliers that a continuation of the BBC monopoly will reduce us to the level of spineless and moronN serfs, traitors to our heritage of liberties. It looks as if we are pretty well sunk either way; but at least none will be able to,say that we did not go down fighting.
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