Words and Gestures in an Uncrowded Room

"What we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of the right," Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, "--not young men who can make a good argument for right or wrong as their interest bids them."

Reminiscing on his days in the College, one of the most perfect "debating types" of his era regretted that he had "never studied elocution or practised debating" as a preparation for public life. Still, he criticized the kind of debating in which "stress is laid, not on getting a speaker to think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly on the side to which he is assigned, without regard either to what his convictions are or what they ought to be."

Today, Harvard debating retains all the opportunities that Theodore Roosevelt felt he missed. While rhetoric and oratory have passed with the advent of the microphone, college debating still offers its devotees the opportunity to practice speaking effectively before an audience. When the audience is lacking, as is often the case, the speaker can still take a dry run in public, albeit under controlled conditions.

Debating, therefore, virtuous or not, has its own rewards. Nevertheless, to a public moralizer like T. R., debating can be hypocritical. With its emphasis on sounding convincing despite personal belief, debating is the devil's tool. For, as often as not, the forces of good go down to defeat in college debate, if only because the opposition is better prepared, or more fluent, or manages, through chance, to have the last word.

But the twenty-odd members of the Debate Council would not readily admit to such guilt. Clearly, a judge's decision can, and often does, go to the side that makes the better use of the poorer argument. To this extent, most College debators will laugh at themselves and the system that enables them to make black seem white. They are frank enough, too, to admit that they spend many seemingly useless hours debating for the same reasons condemned by T.R.

Play Your Best Game

With a spirit of intense competition and partisanship, debating may lack the opportunities for graceful personal expression derived from acting or writing or playing a musical instrument. Instead, a debate is more like an athletic contest, as one student put it. "You go out and try to do the best with what you have. You want to win, and, as in any competitive sport, you'd be pleased even if there were no one to see you. And there is nothing inherently wrong, either, in playing your best game even if you have a poor team."

The analogy can be carried further, to the strategy plays and to the personal and school rivalries that debators and athletes have in common. While some would consider it sacrilege to treat moral and political issues as exercises in thought and expression, today's generation of debators considers itself involved in a virtuous and, indeed, superior pastime.

Unlike other undergraduate activities, debating, by necessity, predicates an absence of publicity. Once the focus of a good deal of student interest, most home debates today draw few if any spectators. Where Sanders was occasionally filled for one of the annual Triangular Debates with Yale and Princeton, the Ames Courtroom last Friday night held no more than 100 spectators. "Today, people can read about the great question of the day, or listen over the raido, more easily than they could in 1900," one student explained. "But while an audience would be good for the ego, it isn't necessary to make debating worthwhile."

Instead, the debator derives his satisfaction from mastering the argument on his side of the issue. "You don't adopt a set of beliefs that you don't accept," one debators said. "You merely try to understand the argument and restate it in a coherent manner."

The more detailed the debator's knowledge of his topic, the better his chances of success. "With a good strong case worked out," the debator continued, "you can be ready for any plan your opposition can present. Just about every argument has a hole in it. If you can find that hole and attack it forcefully enough, you've won the debate." The undergraduate Debate Council annually prepares a voluminous file on the national debate topic--the subject of most intercollegiate tournaments.

Winning, of course, depends on the judges' subjective reactions, and they are seldom presented with clear-cut decisions. The system of judging, with three "non-partial" listeners casting ballots for the winning team, is the aspect of debating most often exposed to criticism. A decision, in effect, is little more than the collective judgement of three listeners from the audience.

Despite possible inequities in determining the victor, the Debate Council last year won 81 percent of its 215 debates. Without the coaching or the sizeable financial assistance provided by other colleges, the Council's record is remarkable. One reason for this successful record was pointed out in a 1914 history of debating compiled by two alumni. Primarily, the report stated, the traditional successes of debating are due to Harvard's high academic standards and the "tendency to produce men who think rather than men who only talk."

'You Don't Exploit Them'

Another reason was recently presented by a visiting debator from little St. Anselm's College, where they are only two varsity "sports"--basketball and debating. "You get lots of top-notch high-school debators at Harvard, but you don't exploit them," he said. "If you bothered to give them as much coaching as we get, you'd win every debate."

But despite constant pressure on the University to hire a coach for the generally impecunious debate team, little assistance has thus far been forthcoming. Ernest R. May, instructor in History, has served this year as unpaid advisor, acting as liason with the Administration and occasionally accompanying a team on a tour. Otherwise, all preparation is up to the individual debator. While the Council can afford to pay for gasoline or busfare, the debators themselves are usually forced to bear the other expenses of touring.

Aside from a debate trip to Florida in March and entry in the National Invitational Tournament at West Point two weeks ago, the Council this year sponsored three spring vacation tours. For the first time, the tours produced a profit for the Council treasury, as opponents paid $20 each to debate Harvard on "any topic and any side" they chose. One trip went to Houston, Tex., a second to the plain states, and a third to Minnesota.

Station Wagon Graduates

The usual means of transportation on such tours is the station wagon of one of the debators. While two men sleep on a mattress in back, two sit in front, switching off and driving constantly. Despite the graduation of the station wagon, the tours will continue next year in the Council's own car, the recent gift of Frederick F. Greenman '14, chairman of the Council's Alumni Advisory Committee and leader of a campaign to improve post-World War II debating at the College.

The Committee, organized in 1954, has investigated the Council's problems--from its finances to its standing in the University community. Since its founding, the group, including former debators H.V. Kaltenborn '09, Clarence B. Randall '12, Arthur N. Holcombe '06, Eaton Professor of Government, emeritus, and A. Chester Hanford '17, Professor of Government and former Dean of the College, has raised $4,400 to endow the Council's activities.

While not yet on a firm financial basis, the Council's position is much better than its nadir ten years ago, when "few members knew or cared where the Council was headed, and fewer still attended any of its meetings or debates," according to the 1947 President's Report. Ten years later, despite the continuing problems of recruiting an audience, more than 50 men participated actively in varsity, freshman, and inter-House debates.

An 1892 Challenge

Intercollegiate debating, in the form we know it, began in 1892 when Yale challenged Harvard to a "joint debate." Some of the participants in that debate were graduates of Boston schools where debates had been held since 1887. The first debate in which no decisions were rendered, had three speakers without a rebuttal. After three years Princeton was added as a regular opponent, and finally, in 1909, the formal Triangulars were set up. Providing for simultaneous debates in Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton, the Triangulars have been held annually since then, despite two wars and Harvard's break in athletic relations with Princeton in the 20s. In the Triangular, dominance has come in cycles, with Harvard winning more than its share. This year's team, which defeated Princeton but lost to Yale, is pictured above.

Prior to the formal debates of the 1890s, a series of undergraduate discussion groups extended back into the 18th century, including the Hasty Pudding Club, organized to "argue and eat corn meal mush." Meeting secretly in a student's room, one group, the "Society of Resident Graduates," in 1792 argued "Freedom for the West Indian Negros," "The Principal Design of Conversation," and "Does a Theatre Corrupt the Morals of the People" The Harvard Union (of 1831) stands out briefly among a number of similar ephemeral groups.

Impetus to the more formal debates of the early 20th century was given by a number of prizes, including the Coolidge Prize, endowed in memory of T. Jefferson Coolidge 1850 and awarded annually to the two best speakers in a practice debate preceeding the Triangulars. The prize, won this year by Robert M.O'Neil '56 and David P. Bryden '57, is awarded on the specifications established in the instructions to the judges for the Triangular Debates:

The decision shall be based "not on the intrinsic merit of the side, but on the greater argumentative ability and the better form of the speaker."

The winning team in the Triangulars--and the team that represents the best in the tradition of Harvard debating--should exhibit, the instructions continue, "thorough knowledge of the subject, logical sequence, skill in selecting and presenting evidence, and power in rebuttal." These are the skills that Roosevelt saw as hypocrisy and that more conventional people call worthwhile