Mongrel

"Alas, alas for debating" has been the rallying cry for a certain group among our intelligentsia ever since the first slipping of forensics as a popular indoor sport. The wail rises sporadically and wholeheartedly from small groups of individuals, but formal debating just does not seem to pack the punch that carries widespread interest among the present-day undergraduates. Oral expression even as every other feature of our social, political, and economic existence, is in a constant state of flux, and for the time being at least debating is staggering under a new low.

Perhaps the status of debating other than as an academic pursuit may be the cause for this attitude. For our part, while we well recognize the benefits of forensics and enjoy a good debate, we cannot bring ourselves to echo "alas for debating." Oral expression of the thirties has abandoned the amphitheater and the auditorium and has retrenched itself among the committee rooms, the round tables, the conference benches. The man worth while is he who has the gift of driving home a point informally against a barrage of conflicting opinions stabbing through a cigar smoke screen laid down by friend and foe alike. The great issues are not decided before the admiring plaudits of an appreciative audience, but are hashed out behind locked doors, with only press reports reaching the general public.

Here are two logical demands sharply defined by idealism and practicality. But our editorial souls feel utmost repugnance at an attempt to mix the two, as recording in the Yale Daily News editorial. Well and good to divert popular sentiment toward debating, but not in this way. Spare the ancient art, and the renowned Websters and Burkes the humiliation of having their oratorical science debased by the introduction of frivolity. There is a definite place for a course or practice of round-table public discussion, a kind of glorified and intelligent bull-session on a specified subject, but there can be no compromise between debating and conference argumentation. A hybrid will but bring discredit to both arts. --Cornell Daily Sun.