form, does he know his subject as does the American? According to the leaders of the Oxford Union, the debater may "spend a few hours, at most a few days,” in his training for the discussion. The actual occasion is one for facility rather than for penetrability. It is not too much to say that the broad and sound preparation characteristic of American debating is unknown at Oxford. The responsibility, again, is upon those who would establish this latter system to show that this thoroughness would not be sacrificed.

Even, however, if we grant that debating has so-called educational values and that an adequate substitute for the "sport" or “game” image may be provided, we are confronted with the familiar indictment made by Roosevelt and others that it is impossible to retain the competitive character of debating and at the same time to engage in a "sincere discussion of public questions." Debating, it is charged, produces demagogues and sophists. A somewhat similar charge is that its atmosphere is that of fighting feudalism rather than that of modern science with its dispassionate investigation of truth, its constantly corrected judgments, and its cooperative spirit. We want, it is claimed, not the legal but the scientific attitude. In reply it should be said, in the first place, that teachers of rhetoric settled generations ago the principle that debaters must not divorce debating from ethics, and that speakers must argue in accordance with their convictions. Horace Mann, in a letter dated June 16, 1851, and printed in many an old debating handbook wrote: “Adopt that side [of the argument] which judgment and conscience assure you to be right." Again, it needs little investigation to make clear that undergraduates have few settled convictions in regard to debate problems. With good conscience they may take either side. Furthermore, despite frequent assertions to the contrary, debaters do investigate both sides and do appreciate the force of the opposing arguments. Again, the debater, although an artist, through his careful analysis, weighing of the problem, sifting of issues, and accumulation of evidence, displays the temper and method of the scientist. Both are dedicated to the "ramifying search for truth." The disputant, moreover, with his conscience and scientific spirit, also recognizes that his conclusions are only tentative, indeed that fresh truth over night may lead to a complete revision of his judgment. He would agree that each debate is, after all, only a step in the broad experiment

to arrive at a stable conclusion, and that four or six speakers do not pretend to speak ex cathedra. Furthermore, like the scientist, the debater recognizes the cooperative element in discussion. He does more than to convince an audience; he thinks and speaks with those hearers. The result is a social discussion and a social decision. Like the scientist, too, he learns to clarify and to arrange, and to ignore no part of the field of investigation. Hence is logical justification for pitting team against team. Such team work, it should be added, need not be at the expense of that fine individualism of the Oxonian who, like Emerson's scholar, "learns to detect the gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of firmament of bards and sages." In general, the disposition to separate sharply the debating from the scientific attitude is unjustified. These considerations all indicate that the debating game properly played should not necessarily produce sophists, archaic militarists, or unscientific investigators.

Two other advantages claimed for the British system are that it makes for better style and for better delivery. The English debating style is philosophical and literary, just as ours is practical and legal. The differences, quite pronounced, are due not so much to contrasted debating systems as to markedly differing, national experience and training. The Englishman has behind him his classical schooling, his intimacy with Greek and Roman orators, and his own rich literature and culture. His style, therefore, is comparatively dignified, original, at times even poetic. The first Oxford speaker in debate with Bates in September showed familiarity with Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Barrie, Plato, Arnold, Huxley, Browning, the Bible, and other sources. The style was idiomatic, spontaneous, unaffected. Such phrasing and allusion would for an American be pedantry. Our undergraduate texts are standard works on economics, statistical abstracts, speeches of Lincoln and Roosevelt. Our collegiate style, in as far as it is original and virile, is the expression of our peculiar political and educational inheritance. Our faith in a rigid constitution, our exaltation of the Supreme Court, explain sufficiently the character and popularity of our judicial style of debate. And for many a year we are not likely to have done with this practical or judicial spirit. Even if our colleges should adopt the British debate formula, our speakers will continue to echo the language of Hamilton and Lincoln rather than that of Burke or Morley.

Certainly much improvement needs to be made in this matter of style. We can break with the extreme rigidity that is neither American nor literary. More and more we must establish an alliance between literature, philosophy, and argument. We may work out a more spontaneous style without the necessity of our reproducing or imitating the Oxford Union method and style of discussion. The problem is, of course, one of revising the college curriculum rather than that of imposing a "literary" style on the debater.

In delivery, too, we may take a leaf from the example of Oxford. We must admit that our debaters, racing against time, "neglect the graces of public speech-the play of personality." The Oxford man, let us candidly agree, is more at home before his audience than is the American. The Oxonian takes time on the platform to reflect, to cultivate delightful informality and even intimacy with his auditors. Again, however, the social and political background may explain somewhat the difference. To get the proper accent and inflection, our Yankee would need also to import the British cabinet system of government, the spirit of Hyde Park, the experience with popular judgment. Surely, though, we can overhaul our performance so that our speakers shall be at least human, conversational, and within limits even humorous. To this end we may have only two speakers on a side, and merge the rebuttals into lengthened main speeches. At the Oxford-Bates debate in September the rebuttals were eliminated and the main speeches, by agreement, were unlimited in length. Each speaker used more than thirty minutes. The audience gave close attention until the final speaker stopped at eleven-thirty o'clock. The delivery of the home team was in several respects superior to that of previous Bates teams. Let us also encourage questions from the floor, attach a forum, and call for a popular vote on the merits of the question. These things, I believe, can be done without the sacrifice of a compact, logical style, and the other virtues of our competitive debating.

In conclusion, our traditional debate has a value too great to be disregarded. If the practice here and there has fallen upon evil times, the reason lies not in the mendacity of the speakers, the artificiality of the game, or the presence of the judges, but rather in the complexities,—or shall I say confusion?—of undergraduate life. A proper remedy for the ills of debating would seem to lie in adequate faculty supervision and guidance. This

conclusion, I am aware, is trite, but it needs emphatic reaffirmation. Minimize excessive legalism. Establish an open forum. Penalize the unimaginative and dull delivery. Recall the debaters to a solid intellectual program. Resort only sparingly to the "twenty-four hour" contests. Make room for "discussion group" meetings. Finally, provide, in addition to the present debates, opportunities for exercises of the character suggested by the typical British discussions.

Orginally an interscholastic debate was carried on by six students, three from each of the competing schools. There was but one contest each year, held, as a rule, alternately at each of the schools. The members of the visiting team made the journey alone, save for a faculty supervisor, and their fellow students, left behind at home, were content to hear the report next morning, except as a few ardent friends of the team waited for reports by wire.

But anything savoring of contest could not long resist taking on, in some measure, the artificial enthusiasm of athletic meets, and recognizing, in addition, the advantage always possessed by a team speaking before a friendly audience, there soon developed two annual contests, one at each school. Manifestly, under this system, it must often happen that each school would win one decision, and there would develop a tie, but principals, generally, and often the members of the team themselves, rather recoiled from attempting a third contest, with the attendant arduous preparation, so that the frequent recourse of athletic teams, "the rubber," seldom met with favor in the field of debate. Moreover, the chances for a true measure of ability, even if the third contest were indulged in, were not at all good. In each debate a new question was called for by both the debaters and the audiences, and there was always the lurking possibility that this question might not be evenly balanced. Further source of dissatisfaction was found in the fact that even two debates, with an entirely new preparation for each event, seriously taxed the energies of the students involved. So, on the whole, the practice of holding more than one interscholastic debate a year was quite generally deplored.

1 Education. 34 416-20. March, 1914. Group Systems in Interscholastic Debating. D. E. Watkins.

But Young America would not thus be arbitrarily deprived of his chance to win his spurs, and he conceived the idea of debating upon the same question with different schools, this plan possessing the advantage that he measured himself with more than one antagonist, and that he was enabled to do it without being burdened with a second long period of reading and general preparation. This feeling on the part of the debaters themselves was seconded by the policy among state universities and some small colleges of organizing state-wide leagues, where, by a system of pyramids, the championship of a whole state might be determined.

However, even this plan was soon found unsatisfactory. The series was too long, as many as seven debates being required to determine the championship of eight schools. A change of sides was often found necessary also, since two negative teams or two affirmative teams might very well happen to win in any group of four schools, and this proved to require almost as much work as was necessitated under the older plan of debating a new question. There was still the evil attendant upon transporting large bodies of student enthusiasts, often late at night, and, while there was a gain in more thorough work on account of the supervision of higher institutions of learning, the publishing of bibliographies, and the recommendation of the study of books on the theory and art of debating, the plan, as a whole, was still found to be far from ideal.

In the meantime there had developed at the universities what is known as the “triangular" debating league, and this was at once appropriated by the high school debating interests. Large numbers of "triangles" were organized throughout the country. By this plan each school is represented by two teams, one affirmative team and one negative team. Usually all the negative teams debate away from home, since the burden of proof resting upon the affirmative is thought to be counterbalanced by the advantage of speaking before the home audience. Thus the negative team from school A (supposing the three schools in the league to be represented by A, B and C) debates the affirmative team from B at B, the negative team from B debates the affirmative team from C at C, and the negative team from C debates the affirmative team from A at A. Clearly this system is a great step in advance. Six students, instead of three, are given opportunity to show their mettle in forensic contests. The dangers of an ill-balanced question are obviated for if the question