x. This is unsportsmanlike, for

(a) It frequently results in the game being won by the inferior team.

b. These contests are characterized by a spirit of professionalism, for

x. Large crowds gather to witness them.

y. Large sums of money are spent in preparatory arrangements and for admission.

CONCLUSION

Since football, as now played, is not an essential form of school athletics, since it is not a beneficial form of physical exercise, since it is detrimental to the best scholarship, and since it is detrimental to student morals, it is not a beneficial form of school athletics.

Exercise 99

1. CLASS EXERCISE: Draw up a brief for the affirmative of the question briefed in Section 84. See again the suggestions in Exercise 19 (1).

2. CLASS EXERCISE: Select by vote one of the propositions in Exercise 100, and, after the proposition has been sufficiently studied and read about, draw up two briefs, one for the affirmative and one for the negative.

3. Write out a finished argument from one of the briefs made for 2. Choose the side that you believe in.

4. Select another of the propositions in Exercise 100, read all the articles and books on the question you can find, and draw up a brief for the affirmative or the negative. Submit your brief to your instructor for criticism. Revise or rewrite your brief in accordance with your instructor's criticism, go again over the material you have gathered, and write out the finished argument.

5. Arrange a debate on the proposition stated in Section 84. See Section 85.

SECTION 85

Preparation for Debate

In preparing for debate of any sort, and these remarks apply in part to the written argument, several things should be borne in mind. Choose for debate a question that you are intensely interested in, and debate only that side of it that you believe in. Never, for the sake of mere argument, take a side that you do not sincerely believe to be right. Sincerity is worth more to you than any amount of practice in argument at the sacrifice of truth. The question chosen, examine at the very start the content of your mind; determine how much of your opinion you can prove, and how much of it is mere prejudice and speculation. Study well the question itself, define the terms used in the proposition, find out the point really at issue, and decide upon whom rests the burden of proof. Then sweep aside all matters that are not essential to the argument, including such as are admitted by both sides, and prepare to debate the special issue and nothing else. Remember that if the question is debatable, it must have two fairly plausible sides learn, therefore, what may be said against your side in order that you may know best what to say for it. Be fair and generous in your debate, and seek not so much to win over your opponent as to convince others of the justice of your

cause.

When you have drawn up a carefully prepared brief of your argument, write out the finished argument with as much pains as if you were preparing your manuscript for a first-class publishing house. Having written out the argument, you are at last ready to prepare for the spoken

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debate. And at this stage comes the real difficulty of preparation for debate. If you commit your argument word for word, your debate will not have about it that air of extemporization which is so convincing in spoken debate. Whatever you do, therefore, do not memorize your written argument. On the contrary, put your written argument aside, and, with your brief before you as a guide, practise talking" your debate your debate just as if you were talking to an audience. At first the thoughts and the words will be slow in coming, and you will probably make some blunders-blunders that would make people laugh at you were they to hear you. But keep talking away until you can talk connectedly and earnestly and convincingly on each point in your debate. Talk in the same fashion on the points you think your opponent may urge on the other side. Thus prepared, nothing that your opponent can say will surprise you into silence. Constant practice in talking to imaginary audiences, and some experience in actual debate, will eventually reward you amply for your efforts.

Exercise 100

PROPOSITIONS FOR DEBATE

1. The high school course should contain fewer studies.

2. American boys should receive military training.

3. To study with another student is detrimental to the best scholarship.

4. Written examinations are a fair test of scholarship.

5. Manual training should be substituted for school athletics.

6. The rules of football should be so revised as to admit of a more

open game.

7. The public should not be admitted to the grounds during athletic contests between schools.

8. The reading of dime novels is a mental dissipation.

9. Chemistry (or some other laboratory science) should be a compulsory study throughout the high school course.

10. French (or some other modern language) should be a compul sory study throughout the high school course.

11. Trusts should be effectively controlled by law. (A trust is a combination of financial interests, formed with the intention of creating a monopoly.)

12. Strikes have usually benefited the strikers.

13. The employment of women should be restricted by law.

14. The Isthmian Canal should be fortified and defended by the United States.

15. The United States Navy should be increased until it is the equal of any foreign navy.

16. Postal savings banks should be established by the government. 17. The Nicaragua route should have been chosen by Congress in preference to the Panama route.

18. The United States should have a permanent diplomatic service. 19. The recent war with Spain was justifiable.

20. Cabinet officers should have seats in the House of Representatives.

21. Capital punishment should be abolished.

22. Unanimity should not be required of juries in criminal cases. 23. Lynching is sometimes justifiable.

24. The President of the United States should be elected by direct vote of the people.

25. United States Senators should be elected by direct vote of the people.

26. In municipal elections national party lines should be discarded. 27. As a means of securing municipal reform independent political action is preferable to party action.

28. Reciprocity treaties with other nations should be encouraged for the purpose of increasing American trade.

29. Arbitration between employers and employees should be compulsory.

30. Labor unions, as organized and managed in the United States, are a benefit to the public.

APPENDIX

I. HOW TO PREPARE SCHOOL MANUSCRIPTS

It is next to impossible to handle a large number of school themes without more or less attention to system. The work of correction, burdensome enough in any case, is doubly oppressive when themes are written on all sorts, sizes, and colors of paper, and handed in at the student's own convenience. There is no reason at all why the whole matter should not be conducted on business principles. At the start, therefore, it should be made clear just what the following directions for the preparation of school manuscripts mean, and just why directions of any sort have to be adopted. Thereafter, the observance of the directions should be rigidly enforced. Failure to observe the directions should seriously affect a student's mark. Themes that do not conform to the required directions should be returned unread, and no excuse should be accepted for handing in a theme after the time set for it to be handed in which a reasonable business man would not accept for a breach of punctuality on the part of one of his employees. This method, persisted in, will go a long way toward lightening the instructor's burden of correction; it will also relieve the student from the annoyance of delayed work.

1. Paper.1- Unruled letter paper (about 8 x 10 or 81 × 11 1 These directions refer almost entirely to the final draft of a theme. The preliminary drafts, and the more of these the better, may be written with the pencil on any sort of paper that comes to hand. In writing at white heat, which is the only way one should ever write a first draft, one has no time to think about matters of form. It is only after a theme has been laboriously worked over in the light of preceding lessons, only after it has been made as perfect as it is in one's power to make it, that the directions here given are to be utilized.