Learn to suspend judgment while you look for evidence. A hypothesis is not a conclusion; it is an alert uncertainty used in the exploration of facts.
Margaret Ball
A few things of intercollegiate importance have changed their mannerisms more strikingly than the debate.
The old-time debate at its worst was mortally dull. It began, 'Mr. Chairman, Honorable Judges, Worthy Opponents, and Friends.' It went on with half a dozen seasons of address-making by two completely insulated teams, and rebuttals that were not rebuttals but only Reviews of Reviews. The speeches may not have been much longer than ten minutes apiece when measured clockwise, but they seemed everlasting when measured by the ear. They reminded one of Mark Twain's celebrated promise when a committee had asked him to speak very briefly at a banquet. 'Yes,' said he, 'I will be brief but tedious.'
On the other hand, at its best the old-time intercollegiate debate was an electrifying encounter between two teams of star performers, drilled to the limit, documented to the letter, primed with facts. Issues were joined, impromptu arguments worked into the set speeches on the spur of the moment, and conclusions arrived at with a carefully 'saved' climax at the end. The debate captains plotted their strategy as minutely as old war lords; and the teams worked up their appeal to reason with the well-rehearsed dramatic effect of seasoned troupers on the stage. The audience was partisan and full of suspense about the outcome, the judges tense and grave; bonfires were ready to light in case the home team won. Anxious crowds sat by the telephone a tthe distant college waiting to hear the 'returns.' And if the returns were favorable, a counter-bonfire was lighted on the counter-campus, and celebrations ensued.
With so much college spirit ready to touch off, it is no wonder that the best debaters were in danger of dropping everything else in the interests of their preparation for several weeks before the debate.
The modern intercollegiate debate is less well prepared, less portentous, and more amusing.
At its worst, the modern debate reminds you of those bad dreams in which you stand on a platform totally unprepared, obliged to bluff for your life with an audience waiting.
At its best it is a brisk and brilliant contest of wits, allowing for quick statement and anti-statement, questioning and cross-questioning, participation on the initiative of the audience - the whole affair capital exercise in thinking on the dot.
The specific form of the debate is flexible, and rules for it can be changed from year to year. Some sort of forum is the only constant feature. The Eastern Intercollegiate Debate League has been trying various plans. For instance: a college for men decides to challenge a college for women - or the other way about. One women's team visits the college for men; one men's team visits the college for women. The audience, always a mixed one, has an opportunity to ask questions and propose arguments from the floor. Instead of three set speeches from two teams, there is less speech-making and a great deal of cross-questioning, a member of one team catechizing a member of the othe rteam, not in the third person as 'my worthy opponent, the second speaker for the negative,' but by name.
These question-and-answer bombardments can furnish excellent light comedy, or they can descend to heavy farce. At their worst, the boys ask the questions in the bullying manner of modish criminal lawyers, and the girls answer like little shrews. But at their best - well, at their best the men are as adroit as polo-players, or fencers, or - born debaters. And the girls are likely to play up to whatever seems to be their game. The mood and tone of the question-answer scrimmage seem often to be determined by the men. There are girls who can pursue their own established 'line,' serene or philosophical or sparkling or mouselike, no matter what the other side may do. But ordinarily, from the outset, the girls' team has a tendency to take its 'expressional' cue from the men, almost as instinctively as a girl allows a man to lead in dancing.
Some of the young men are beaming and energetic. Some are grave and suave. Some are cautious, some are whirling dervishes, some are happy-go-lucky to a degree. Some of them are great bluffers, doing it far more effectively than girls can ever do it, because the men look so much more authoritative when they are bluffing, and because of the more impressive quality of their voice. One thing they never are: the boys are never sentimental, and the girls are never coy. Usually the debates are good-natured and impersonal. Now and then they slide downhill on a personal slant - almost inevitable when young speakers are talking impromptu, under rapid fire, without benefit of coach.
On occasion the affair can degenerate into heavy sarcasm like the following:
Man, sententiously:'Have you ever, Miss X, heard of the Monroe Doctrine?'
Girl: 'Yes.'
Man: 'Yes. You have heard of it, Miss X. And did you ever stop to consider that you might some day like to study into its bearing on small nations?'
Girl: 'I am not sure that I understand your question.'
Man, severely: 'Then will you kindly name one nation in this hemisphere to which the Monroe Doctrine would apply?'
Girl: 'Mexico.'
Man, objecting: 'But is Mexico a nation, Miss X?'
Girl, bristling: 'Well, what is it?'
Man, suddenly bethinking himself - after a pause for painful meditation: 'You're right! It is!'
This was a young man from a Canadian university who was doing the questioning, and nobody knows what he momentarily deemed Mexico to be. Perhaps a Dominion.
As to the subjects, the one being debated above was this:
Resolved: That the so-called advanced nations should leave the so-called backward nations to work out their own economic and political salvation.
Some of us remember when debating teams all over the country were discussion the topic, 'Resolved: That immigration into the United States should be restricted.' One can trace the march of history by following through the decades the public topics chosen for student debates.
But one of the most entertaining features of the new debating is the freedom with which informal topics are often proposed, topics having no bearing on public affairs but suitable because provocative of conflicting views. One of these was, 'Resolved: That college does not prepare a girl for matrimony.' A college for men took the position that college does prepare for marriage. A team from Mount Holyoke took the opposite side of the debate - at least that was the line-up between the teams that debated at the college for men. Arguments flew thick and fast. The men announced that they had canvassed their friends and that seventeen out of every twenty said they preferred to marry a college graduate, 'even if she was not a kitchen canary.' The girls reminded the men that college often made a girl career-conscious. The men replied that college teaches girls relative values, making them prize home life more rather than less. They said college teaches girls adaptability, making them more companionable; that it trains the intelligence and that the children in their homes will get the benefit; that it broadens their interests so that they can create a more, not less, delightful home life; they said that college teaches analysis, so that new tasks can be taken up intelligently, and so that domesticity is seen as a dignified means to a worthy end. They said that they wanted companionship in matters of intellectual growth, for which college does prepare.
One of the young men said that he believed the matter of a career could be adjusted so as to fit in with the other activities of a wife's day. A member of the audience asked him if he would be willing to give a description of his idea of a wife's day, and he proceeded to do this in masterful detail.
So it went back and forth, the audience appreciating every point, especially when the cross-questioning began. The young man who was doing the questioning for his team was thoughtful and commanding. The girl who was being questioned was an attractive little Miss Muffet of a freshman, looking up at him gravely and replying to each query after giving it deep thought.
Finally the young man came out with the following question: 'Miss M., do you honestly believe that a non-college wife could permanently satisfy a college man?'
There was a pause. 'Well,' said little Miss Muffet reflectively, 'my mother satisfies my father.'
Whereupon the college for men hit the ceiling with applause.
Will anybody kindly imagine this sort of debate conducted twenty years ago? Mr. MacGregor Jenkins reports his findings on a similar debate in his fine book, Sons of Ephraim: The Spirit of Williams College. He and his publishers, Houghton Mifflin Company, have kindly permitted a quotation here. After describing a debate at Williams and outlining the new customs, Mr. Jenkins remarks:
I tried to imagine a debate of this character in my day in old Alumni Hall. If such a thing could have happened, and it could not, the young women would have entered the hall blushing attractively and sunk languidly into their seats. The men would have risen when they came in and the debate would have been a polite interchange of opinion without unnecessary contradiction. Everybody would have been self-conscious and awkward. No questions would have been asked by the audience because we had not been formally introduced to our visitors. If there chaperons happened to be particularly broad-minded, the young women might have been allowed, after the debate, a plate of ice-cream at Wo Adams's, or a glass of soda at Fred Severence's with one or two chosen and approved young men. They then would have been hurried away from the corrupting influence of masculine society.On this recent occasion the visitors were treated with the utmost courtesy, but with no more than would have been accorded a team from Amherst. No one was self-conscious, they least of all . . . . If their feminine sensibilities were at all wounded by the casual air of their listeners (and I do not think for a moment that they were, for they were far too modern and far too sensible for that), I will repeat for their benefit that I overheard a student say: 'Well, they won, but they won on personality.' I do not think his judgment was fair, but I will admit that there was enough personality to have won a dozen debates . . . .
Certainly in my day a hundred or more undergraduates would not have gathered on such an occasion, and not one of us would have known enough to ask any one of the many questions. Times are different and better.
So they are, so they are. One's comparative impression of old and new debating depends somewhat, to be sure, on which examples under each regime one happens to have heard. But certainly debating today is increasingly natural and spontaneous. The debaters have more frequent and more casual opportunities for meetings with other colleges. Non-debaters have the advantage of the open forum. Alliances are closer with political science clubs and other mutually helpful organizations concerned with public affairs. And if the debaters are not as punctiliously prepared as they used to be, niether do they feel obliged, out of 'college spirit,' to send their whole academic career whistling down the wind, on every occasion when they are challenged to debate.