But despite constant pressure on the University to hire a coach for the generally impecunious debate team, little assistance has thus far been forthcoming. Ernest R. May, instructor in History, has served this year as unpaid advisor, acting as liason with the Administration and occasionally accompanying a team on a tour. Otherwise, all preparation is up to the individual debator. While the Council can afford to pay for gasoline or busfare, the debators themselves are usually forced to bear the other expenses of touring.

Aside from a debate trip to Florida in March and entry in the National Invitational Tournament at West Point two weeks ago, the Council this year sponsored three spring vacation tours. For the first time, the tours produced a profit for the Council treasury, as opponents paid $20 each to debate Harvard on "any topic and any side" they chose. One trip went to Houston, Tex., a second to the plain states, and a third to Minnesota.

Station Wagon Graduates

The usual means of transportation on such tours is the station wagon of one of the debators. While two men sleep on a mattress in back, two sit in front, switching off and driving constantly. Despite the graduation of the station wagon, the tours will continue next year in the Council's own car, the recent gift of Frederick F. Greenman '14, chairman of the Council's Alumni Advisory Committee and leader of a campaign to improve post-World War II debating at the College.

The Committee, organized in 1954, has investigated the Council's problems--from its finances to its standing in the University community. Since its founding, the group, including former debators H.V. Kaltenborn '09, Clarence B. Randall '12, Arthur N. Holcombe '06, Eaton Professor of Government, emeritus, and A. Chester Hanford '17, Professor of Government and former Dean of the College, has raised $4,400 to endow the Council's activities.

While not yet on a firm financial basis, the Council's position is much better than its nadir ten years ago, when "few members knew or cared where the Council was headed, and fewer still attended any of its meetings or debates," according to the 1947 President's Report. Ten years later, despite the continuing problems of recruiting an audience, more than 50 men participated actively in varsity, freshman, and inter-House debates.

An 1892 Challenge

Intercollegiate debating, in the form we know it, began in 1892 when Yale challenged Harvard to a "joint debate." Some of the participants in that debate were graduates of Boston schools where debates had been held since 1887. The first debate in which no decisions were rendered, had three speakers without a rebuttal. After three years Princeton was added as a regular opponent, and finally, in 1909, the formal Triangulars were set up. Providing for simultaneous debates in Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton, the Triangulars have been held annually since then, despite two wars and Harvard's break in athletic relations with Princeton in the 20s. In the Triangular, dominance has come in cycles, with Harvard winning more than its share. This year's team, which defeated Princeton but lost to Yale, is pictured above.

Prior to the formal debates of the 1890s, a series of undergraduate discussion groups extended back into the 18th century, including the Hasty Pudding Club, organized to "argue and eat corn meal mush." Meeting secretly in a student's room, one group, the "Society of Resident Graduates," in 1792 argued "Freedom for the West Indian Negros," "The Principal Design of Conversation," and "Does a Theatre Corrupt the Morals of the People" The Harvard Union (of 1831) stands out briefly among a number of similar ephemeral groups.

Impetus to the more formal debates of the early 20th century was given by a number of prizes, including the Coolidge Prize, endowed in memory of T. Jefferson Coolidge 1850 and awarded annually to the two best speakers in a practice debate preceeding the Triangulars. The prize, won this year by Robert M.O'Neil '56 and David P. Bryden '57, is awarded on the specifications established in the instructions to the judges for the Triangular Debates:

The decision shall be based "not on the intrinsic merit of the side, but on the greater argumentative ability and the better form of the speaker."

The winning team in the Triangulars--and the team that represents the best in the tradition of Harvard debating--should exhibit, the instructions continue, "thorough knowledge of the subject, logical sequence, skill in selecting and presenting evidence, and power in rebuttal." These are the skills that Roosevelt saw as hypocrisy and that more conventional people call worthwhile