HUMOR COMES TO AID OF DEBATING IN COLLEGES

The interest in debating which has recently been evidenced at the University has been held to indicate a return to undergraduate favor of that activity. The Oxford-Cambridge team which has visited this country in recent years has brought with it a new and lighter attitude towards debating, the influence of which it is not hard to see. The following comment on last weekend's debate against Yale, from the Boston Transcript, challenges the humor which is being espoused in this country as a forensic weapon. It follows in part:

"American college debating has been for some years, by the confession of its own devotees, quite dour and dismal. Should it become now a laughing-stock? Harvard, Yale and Princeton have undertaken to move it in this direction. The crucial topic set for their latest triangular wrangling--"Resolved, that education is the curse of the present age" and they chose with chuckles aforethought. They expressly intended to give light discussion wide play in the ensuing debate, and so to invite the attendance of a larger audience, tempted by an opportunity not only to think but to smile.

Lampoon Editors Bribed

"In good-part of this purpose Harvard and Yale were successful at Cambridge on Saturday night. A much more sizable audience was lured to Paine Hall than the pitiful handful which has sat at the ringside of many an arduous intercollegiate debate in the past. And the attentive observer had many free and fair chances to laugh. Unfortunately, however, he had also much occasion to groan. For one thing the speakers for Yale established so complete a monopoly upon the humor of the evening that the Department of Justice might well bring suit against them for a combination in restraint of trade. Surely it is a plausible theory that the editors of the Lampoon had been bribed by Yale not to suggest, in preparation for the debate a single risible notion of which the Harvard team could make capital.

"But Yale used its wit to no effectively organized end whatsoever. Time and again the debaters from New Haven suggested elements of a possible case, but time and again they failed to catch these up into the weft and warp of any sequential argument. It was plain that they sought only humor. Harvard, on the other hand, did present a case. Now, this discrepancy need not necessarily have been difficult to resolve. Had the governing council of the Harvard-Princeton-Yale triangle frankly declared not alone that it courted humor, but also that humor, or its absence, was to be the chief test of victory or defeat, the decision might very easily have been given--and given in favor of Yale. The council, however, has agreed upon no such instruction. It seems clear in its own mind that it desires to introduce laughter into debate, but it is not yet convinced that it desires debating to become only a laughing-stock.

"Better the Smile Alone"

"A determination of this issue, a clarification of purpose, most patently are required. By all means let American undergraduates be called upon to use their wits and use them abundantly, but if they are to use them in a manner which could not possibly exert practical influence upon any jury, any Legislature, any public assembly or board of directors, let some new name be invented for such lightsome exercise. After all, it is a bit laughable to drag the laws of argumentation into the making only of laughter. Better the smile alone, without implied insult to logic."