The University debating team, defending the negative of the question "Resolved: That education is the curse of the present age," defeated Yale by the unanimous vote of the judges on Saturday night. The question was otherwise decided by the audience, who favored the Eli speakers by a 65 to 32 vote. This was the first of the Harvard-Yale-Princeton debates; the next one in which the University participates will be at Princeton on April 10.

The Yale team was forced by the nature of the question to rely chiefly on wit and humorous effects to support the affirmative, while the Crimson debaters had the advantage of being able to bring into play the more serious aspects of the matter. Basil Davenport, the last speaker for the affirmative, showed himself particularly adept at warding off his opponents by a brilliant and witty line of argument.

The Yale team was composed of H. G. Rowell, H. H. Thompson, and Basil Davenport, while E. C. Sibley '28, D. S. Dickson '27, and I. J. Fain '27 represented Harvard. Professor I. S. Winter, Professor Emeritus of Public Speaking at Harvard, was the chairman of the debate, and Professor C. Edmund Neil, of Boston University, Mr. James E. King, of the Boston Transcript editorial staff, and the Reverend William R. Leslie, of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Brookline, were the judges.

The Educative Tabloid

The first speaker for the affirmative, H. G. Rowell, said that modern education was a curse because it was carried on chiefly through the medium of the tabloid newspaper. These newspapers have taken over all the branches of education according to Rowell, who went on to say, "They educate us in psychology; ethics, especially those of the eternal triangle; science--I read in a tabloid paper the other day that a man is going to live 5,000 years on peanuts and rhubarb; philosophy--see all the new expressions they have given us; and politics. Education as taught by Socrares was a blessing. As it is taught by Mr. Hearst it is a curse."

Gets Philosophical

E. C. Sibley '28, who opened the negative side of the argument, after remarking that tabloid newspapers seemed to be the only text books used at Yale, launched into a discussion of education as the formative influence in the development of the child. The child full of potentialities is driven by its natural curiosity to investigate and experiment, and as a guide in this inevitable development education becomes a necessity.

H. H. Thomas, the second Yale speaker, attacked the present realization of the ideal of education. He said, "The democratic sentimental education which we enjoy today has ruined any possibilition holds us down. Today we're all morens together." Thomas concluded that education at best is merely a shelter from life.

Cites Renaissance

D. S. Dickson '27 in the next speech made the most convincirg point of the evening for the negative when he showed that the Renaissance had come about largely through the work of the universities which erabled the world to rediscover the classic culture. "Education preserves the cultural continuity of the race," he said in conclusion.

Basil Davenport, the final speaker for the affirmative delivered the most brilliant speech of the evening, and won the audience over to the Yale position. He began by complaining that education dried up one's sense of humor. He also asked how education could recompease us for the diseases and evils which it brings on us and then is itself necessary to cure them. Going off on a different line. Davenport represented himself as a Spartan coming to Athens, which was represented by Harvard, to show the people there that their ideal of education was not the one on which any final judgment should be made concerning the educational progress of other communities