We call the attention of all men in college, particularly of those who are here for the first time, to the opening of the regular club debates this evening. While we look with just pride upon our victories in the forensic field in the past, we must do earnest work if we are to maintain this standard.

Yale, so often victorious in the intercollegiate contests of late, has felt the sting of repeated defeat in debating, and the recent enlargement of her English department, in part, we must believe, to meet the situation, is now well-known. Princeton, the home of debating, has awakened to the fact that we were more than her match. Our enviable position in the past has been made and maintained by the earnest work of a body of men who were interested in speaking, and who had the good of their University deeply at heart. As the time comes to fill their places, let there not be a dearth of trained men.

A reasonable ability to speak before an assemblage, of greater of less proportions, is becoming more and more a necessary part of one's education. The club debates furnish a rare opportunity for the cultivation of such powers, by the rule which permits any one to speak from the floor after the principal disputants have closed.

We cannot urge upon men too strongly the benefit to be obtained from such work, and the advantages of such a training.