The recent newspaper reports of the debate between the Harvard Forum and the Columbia Debating Union show conclusively that the conditions under which such interclub debates are held must be changed, or that they must be given up altogether. Although the greatest care was taken when this debate was being arranged to announce both at Harvard and Columbia that it was a strictly interclub affair, most of the New York and Boston papers have, as usual, spoken of its as "between Harvard and Columbia," aad a far too general impression has thus been established that it was an intercollegiate debate. As long as debates are held in this way between clubs of different universities, elaborately prepared and widely advertised, it seems impossible to have them generally regarded in any but this light; and when such prominence is given them as in the present case and a decision is announced, debating interests in the university of the losing club is sure to receive the same kind of a set-back in the eyes of the public,- to a smaller extent,- as that caused by defeat in a regular intercollegiate debate. This is so manifestly unfair to students who are not members of the particular club interested that some means ought to be taken to prevent its ever happening again.

The CRIMSON does not believe that interclub debates must necessarily be done away with altogether. They are of undoubted value in giving practice to men who have not spoken in university debates and there is all the more incentive to the speakers to do their best if it is known beforehand that a decision is to be given. Moreover, it is hard to see how they can do any harm, provided they are held in club rooms strictly between club members and without all unnecessary publicity. Otherwise, as has been said, no decisions must be made or else the debates must be given up entirely.

After all, however, it would seem that the best way to secure practice in debating in addition to that gained in the weekly club debates and in the intercollegiate contests is in more frequent debates between the Forum and the Union. If one of these were held every month and decisions were given, a healthy, competitive rivalry in debating would be established between the clubs, instead of that which now exists in each trying to get ahead of the other in every possible way on questions of precedence and in securing new members.