Not long ago, at their final meeting of the year, the members of this year's Sophomore Debating Club discussed with considerable interest and much difference of opinion, the advisability of continuing their organization on the same basis next year. At the time we advised against any such move, saying that English 30 together, with the University Debating Club, would not leave a sufficiently efficient margin of debaters in the Junior class to warrant a class club, and that a Junior Club which was only a moderate success, in not keeping the under class clubs up to a sufficiently high standard, would do more harm than good.

The success of Yale's experiment in the "Wigwam" is happily suggestive, however. Though it is inadvisable to continue the 1900 class club on a formal basis, it might with a somewhat different and more social organization still be carried on in the interests of Harvard debating. As is the method at Yale, the club might be divided into several "camps" which could compete informally, debating contemporary college subjects, which, in not requiring a great degree of preparation, would not discourage the busier debaters, and would be most effective in popularizing debate. The Sophomore and Freshman clubs would still retain their more formal status and would remain rivals, while, in the course of a year or two, the "Wigwam" system might be extended to the Senior class and Juniors and Seniors could compete socially and informally.

The danger of such a system is that it is likely to be carried too far, and popularize debating to an inadvisable extent. If the system could be limited to the two upper classes however, it would seem that the University Debating Club and the two courses could exert an "austere" enough influence to prevent an epidemic of informal discussion, and there seems little doubt but that such discussion would do much toward making debating attractive, and making something in common between the men who see each other a couple of hours a week in English 30 or English 6 and have no other relationship.