To the Editors of the Crimson:

Since last Friday there has been more or less discussion throughout the University as to the reasons for our defeat at the hands of Yale. Many men, like Mr. Warren in this morning's CRIMSON, have spoken up honestly, acknowledged our defeat, and sought the cause in our own defects. But I have also heard many who have tried in one way or another to excuse the result. There has been a tendency to lay great stress on the superior form of the Harvard speakers, on the better massing of their argument, and their more clever handling of evidence, and to ascribe their defeat to incomprehensible blindness on the part of the judges or even to some "trick" of the other side. Is not all this rather a dangerous, not to say unmanly way of dodging a square look at the facts? Did not the Harvard speakers go to Sanders Theatre for the purpose of convincing three judges of acknowledged ability and impartiality that they could handle the question at issue better than any representatives of Yale? That was their one main object, and in that they failed. The vital point for Harvard debating now is not how we beat Yale and yet lost the debate, but why we were beaten. It matters comparatively little what we may at length decide the true reason to have been. It may be that our speakers for once forgot the good old Harvard principle of "being able to take your opnent's side and handle it better than he can himself." It may be that in our preparation we did not give sufficient attention to rebuttal. But to whatever reason we may ascribe our failure, we have profited nothing by the lesson if we have not learned that the cause must be sought in our own mistakes. It would seem idle, not to say discourteous, after a defeat, to proclaim that Harvard has always stood for all that is fair and upright in debating, implying thereby that our opponents have not. X.