The Harvard debating team was last evening defeated by Princeton in Alexander Hall, Princeton, before a large audience.

The question for debate was "Resolved. That, the free elective system is the best available plan for the undergraduate course of study. It is understood, that: 1. The free elective system is one based on the principle that each student should select for himself all his studies throughout his college course. 2. The free elective system, thus defined, exists even when a minor part of the studies of the freshman year is prescribed."

The judges were Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., secretary of Yale University; Professor James Edwin Creighton, Ph.D., of Cornell; and Rev. W. R. Richards of New York. Dr. John Huston Finley, president of the College of the City of New York, presided.

The strength of the Princeton team lay in the consistency and flawlessness of its argument, due to the care with which it had prepared its speeches. The Harvard speeches, on the other hand, attempted a bolder attack, and seemed more mature in their delivery. The best speaking of the evening was done by R. B. Fosdick of Princeton. Of the Harvard debaters B. V. Kanaley spoke with great fluency and wit, and A. Tulin with commendable power. Princeton's essential argument emphasized the necessity of the development of the individual for his particular career, while Harvard claimed that a student's judgment was not mature enough to choose what is best, and showed that a course of broad culture was the ideal college education. The judges were out about half an hour, and upon their return reported that the decision had not been unanimonsly in favor of Princeton.

After the debate, a dinner was given in honor of the members of the Harvard team.

The Main Speeches.

R. B. Fosdick opened the debate. Free election, he said, must not be interpreted as involving an abondonment of system. It is a prescribed quantity and a prescribed quality of work on a variable topic. In criticising this system it is important to discriminate clearly between results attributable to administrative methods and those which are manifestly attributable to the broad principle of free election. The affirmative does not underestimate the value on prescribed work, but maintains that the proper place for that work is not in the college but in the preparatory school.

The free elective system is the most natural system of undergraduate work, as it is the only one in which the element of individual fitness is allowed to play a part. There are as many different temperaments in a college community as there are different men. All cannot be made to conform to the same standard. The attempt to establish such a standard gives us merely the out-word form of scholarship and not its real benefits. The worth of a liberal study does not depend primarily upon the subject matter studied but upon the response which it awakens in a student.

Another advantage of the free elective system is that it allows adequate room for the individual interest. This depends upon the psychological law that action varies as interest. A student will reap no benefits from a study unless he is to a certain degree interested in it. The attempt to compel a man to apply himself to subjects in which he has no interest does not result in any aggressive intellectual effort.

These two elements, individual fitness and individual interest, constitute the essence of vital scholarship, which reacts upon the student for his own benefit by raising the standard of instruction throughout his college course. Official protection is withdrawn from certain studies and the professors are compelled to establish course of such intrinsic interest as to cause students voluntarily to elect them.

Kanaley opened the case for the negative. The difference between a restricted elective system and the free elective system, he said, is best illustrated by the difference between restrained liberty and unrestrained liberty. We can distinctly trace the origin of the free elective system of Harvard to the German universities. Conditions in American colleges, however, are quite different from those abroad, and, even admitting the very questionable success of this system at Harvard, it does not necessarily follow that the system would prove successful in other colleges and universities throughout the country. Although the system may be theoretically sound, it has never been tested to any extent, and it is impracticable to carry into effect.

It must be borne in mind that the negative is not called upon to defend any particular regime. It believes that every college should maintain that system which is best qualified to meet its special needs. The affirmative, on the other hand, must prove that the revolutionary system which it defends is better than any other available method of education for all American colleges.

The free elective system is not merely an evolution, as the affirmative will maintain; it is a revolution. And against it stands the weight of opinion held by the majority of eminent educators of the day. The tendency of American colleges, beginning with the University of Indiana in 1888, and ending with Princeton in 1905, has been away from the free elective system. There is no demand or necessity for the system, which would indeed, owing to the varying conditions existing in our colleges, prove in many cases impracticable and unsatisfactory.

H. Hagan, in continuing the case of the affirmative, said: It shall be the purpose of this speech to show that the free elective system is equally well justified by its supremely practical efficiency in preparing men to be useful forces in life because more than any other system of college education. It promotes (1) sound habits of work, (2) broad views and (3) manly character. A study of conditions at Harvard and Princeton shows that free choice is supremely efficient in promoting a vital scholarship. If this is so, is it of any consequence that students are drifting away from the so called disciplinary studies? It is not of far more consequence that they are drifting towards disciplinary effort? It is far better that a man should take studies which really to train him than studies which are supposed to train him. The value of a study to any man can be measured only by its effects upon the man in question.

We pass now to our second proposition, that the free elective system is unrivalled in the promotion of broad views. As far as it is a question of securing to the student a wide and same view of the world in which he lives, the number of studies which have an equal claim upon his attention are as numerous as the many and diverse activities of our complex modern life. In view of the fairly comparable values of the great number of studies in promoting breadth of view, it is ridiculous to fasten upon any single study or department of study and compel the student to take it. It is only when a student neglects some wide field of study that he can be called guilty of narrowness of choice; and an examination of the programs of students in elective colleges will show that they are not prone to such narrowness. Moreover, in the development of the sense of responsibility the free elective system has no equal; for it alone makes the student feel himself essentially responsible for the broader issues and interests of life.