(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial on No-Decision Debates in yesterday's issue is interesting not merely because it reverses a stand formerly maintained by the CRIMSON, but because it skims the borders of the whole problem underlying Harvard debating. Let me elaborate for a moment upon these views.

Now no-decision debates are said to be merely the excuse for poor preparation and fear of losing. It is true that a decision adds zest to the conclusion of a debate, but in the no-decision debate with Stanford Wednesday night an equally strong conclusion was provided by some twenty members of the audience speaking extemporaneously on the issues raised by the debaters and questioning the speakers. An arbitrary decision as to the winners of the debate might well have inhibited this discussion.

The debate with Sanford was on the question, "Resolved, That all collective bargaining be done through non-company unions, protected by law." The Harvard affirmative team had to prove that the company union is a bad thing. It had reasonable grounds for defining the "company union" as a union organized on the initiative of the employer and dominated by him. Yet to make the question thoroughly debatable and to reach the fundamental issues, it chose to define the company union as a union limited to the employees of a single firm. The no-decision nature of the debate may or may not have influenced the method of argument, but the teams did reach the real issues.

The question of decision or no-decision debates is merely a minor problem for Harvard debating. The larger factors to be considered are, first, some sort of adequate endowment or provision of funds for debating, and, second, an increased student interest in debating activities. Public speaking has become a vital portion of every man's education, and debating offers the opportunity to learn to speak while studying major questions of national interest. Charles B. Fethlemen '36.