Eton Society (Pop) debate October 1917. Michael's speech

[Nicholas]

By kind permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College

From the Eton College Chronicle no. 1629, p.306, October 25 1917

The House met on Friday last to discuss whether ultra-optimism or ultra-pessimism is the best. 
Mr [M] Davies, the opener, declared that he was aware of the fact that extremes have little to be said for them, but that he wished to reveal the ultra-pessimist as having more in his favour than the man who transgressed the bounds of optimism to the same extent.
He then asked those present to transport themselves, mentally only, to their comfortable armchairs in their perfectly equipped West-End palace - here some very negligible details - and to image the sudden proximity of the two rivals, the one etcetera the other etcetera: and to realize that, although both were infinitely humorous, the pessimist was even more so - the boisterousness of the optimist being perhaps ominous of the irritable.
He then further requested the House to let the great big world keep truning, and to look upon itself, or himself, amid the rather less appreciable delicacies of an East-End eating-house of no great repute.
The same two shapes appear, and the transported House realizes that while the pessimist and itself or himself, in its reduced state, has become almost trying the optimist has gone one further and developed into the intolerable - here a list of intolerabilities.  And the House shrinks weeping to the pessimist, thinking him lovely in the light of the ugliness of the other.