Education: Debates

A debating team from Oxford University is now in the U. S. to settle the question: “Resolved: That this House condemns the French occcupation of the Ruhr as prejudicial to the welfare of the world.” They will debate teams from several American colleges on successive nights, but not always on the same side of the question. The schedule: Bates (Lewiston, Me.), Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and some Canadian institutions. In their first engagement, the Oxford men (affirmative) emerged the losers by a vote of the audience, 1,135-178. The verdict apparently was rendered on the merits of the question and not of the presentation. Said the New fork Tribune, editorially: “The Oxford men had too tough an assignment. The result probably would have been no different had their team included Lloyd George, John Maynard Keynes and the editor of The Manchester Guardian. No disputants could prove to a lot of hard-headed Yankees that France was in the wrong. That contention may hold water along the Thames, but not on the banks of the Androscoggin.”