So the article has not been written. Daring, disturbing, intensely personal, and calculated to arouse discussion the country over, it promised all the elements of supreme interest, and yet what worthy end would it have served? Our too impatient and too militant idealists have learned their lesson-or, at all events, the majority of them have-in anguish of soul. There is little danger of their again attempting a dozen times more than can in the nature of things be achieved. They are out of conceit both with haste and with force. And the minority, though as impatient and as militant as before, command no such following as before. Albeit slowly, the world-wide neurosis is passing. methods particularly those aiming to reach motive, in the belief that motive, once reached, controls conduct-are once more held in the esteem they deserve. In other words, we are returning to a recognition of the well-established principle of sane progress: From within, out.

Old

AHUMAN-NATURALIST

usually think of a naturalist as one who studies and writes about external nature-birds, animals, trees, and the rest. But all the great naturalists who have written literature rather than text-books have been what might be called human-naturalists; they have seen and loved external nature from the point of view of human nature. Decidedly this is so of W. H. Hudson, the English naturalist, who died lately after a literary career of nearly forty years, during which he produced a long list of stories, books of observation, and collected sketches and essays. All of these, even such a fanciful romance as "Green Mansions," with its marvelous heroine who talks the bird language, had their strongest interest in the author's own contemplative and appreciative love for nature and its effect on human character and ways of living.

Hudson's best-known and most elaborate books have to do with South America, but he was quite as much at home and quite as sincerely interested in the country lanes of England as in

the pampas of Uruguay and the Argentine. Thus quite lately his early book "Afoot in England," long out of print, was republished and was enjoyed as a charming record of rambles with more reflection, mood, and human interest than of close description. What one critic said of this little book well describes Hudson's writing at large: "Here is a mind and heart to know well, a personality deep and ardent, yet aloof in a kindly reticence, too." So with his "Shepherd's Life," in which the shepherds, their talk and traditions, even more than their sheep and dogs, form the real subject. So of another book of English sketches in which he humorously exalts the intelligence of the pig as greater than that of the dog or the elephant and pleads almost rhythmically for mercy to the lovely, harmless snakes. His last book, "A Traveller in Little Things," is a series of talks about English village life.

South America, however, was his native land; there he was born, and there he lived many years on the boundless and lonely pampas and among the wild and tame guachos. He loved it all, and the main secret of his hold on his readers is that he instinctively conveys the vividness of this liking to them. He did not write for effect, but to tell what really interested him. "The Purple Land" and "Far Away and Long Ago" are full of his knowledge of the horsemen of the plains and include even talks with old men who remembered the British expedition to Uruguay in 1807.

Mr. Galsworthy declared of one of Hudson's books that "it immortalizes as passionate a love of all beautiful things as ever was in the heart of man." Truly Hudson's love of nature and man was deep and sincere; but "passionate" does not seem just the word; his written expression of the feeling was calm, sane. He and friendly rather than ecstatic. was not a poet at heart, as was Richard Jefferies, nor a scientific specialist like Fabre, nor a philosopher like Thoreau. His powers of observation were acute and his skill in combining realistic narrative with imaginative descriptions of nature in her wild or charming aspects was unusual.

The public learned to appreciate Hudson's work slowly, but libraries soon. found that there was a constantly and gradually increasing demand for his books. One by one they have been republished from time to time; the "Naturalist in Plata" (much more than a handbook) has appeared in six editions. Happily, he lived long enough to enjoy this appreciation; and no doubt it was a great pleasure to him to be able to resign last year, as no longer needed, the British civil pension of £150 which

was accorded to him, as to other authors of little means, whose literary work is of sterling value.

I

DEBATES AND
BELIEFS

N the last week of September the Oxford University Debating Team will go to Lewiston, Maine, for a return match with Bates College. An account of the visit paid by Bates to Oxford appears on the next page.

We venture to say that very few Outlook readers, or daily newspaper readers, for that matter, in the United States, know that Bates College, numbering only a few hundred students, wears the crown of American intercollegiate debating. Certainly Bates has achieved no such National reputation as Center College, Kentucky, but then Center College achieved her reputation in football, and football provides a surer path to the front page than debating.

These Anglo-American debates afford us an excellent opportunity of comparing our own methods with those of the English universities. In the Oxford Union the whole body of graduate or undergraduate members present are the judges of the contest, and the side gets

the decision which convinces the Union of the soundness of its views. In America, as we know, there are usually three judges who award the palm of victory upon the intellectual merits of the arguments advanced. The British system has as its aim the development of parliamentary debaters; the American system has as its goal the production of trial lawyers. The argument against the American system was never more COgently presented than by Theodore Roosevelt in his Autobiography. Mr. Roosevelt wrote:

Personally I have not the slightest sympathy with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given proposition and told to maintain it without the least reference to whether those maintaining it believe in it or not. I know that under our system this is necessary for lawyers, but I emphatically disbelieve in it as regards general discussion of political, social, and industrial matters. What we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of the right; not young men who can make a good argument for either right or wrong as their interest bids them. The present method of carrying on debates on such subjects as "Our Colonial Policy," or "The Need of "The a Navy," or Proper Position of the Courts in Constitutional Questions," encourages precisely the wrong attitude among those who take part in them. There is no effort to instill sincerity and intensity of conviction. On the con

trary, the net result is to make the contestants feel that their convictions have nothing to do with their arguments. I am sorry I did not study elocution in college; but I am exceedingly glad that I did not take part in the type of debate in which stress is laid, not upon getting a speaker to think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly on the side to which he is assigned, without regard either to what his convictions are or to what they ought to be.

We wonder whether this difference between the English and the American procedure is not responsible for the gen

eral indifference of the American public to intercollegiate debating. Of course no system would give to debating the popular appeal of football, but perhaps a change of method might be able to put a college discussion such as that between Bates and Oxford on the second page, if not the first, of our daily journals. Our debates as at present conducted are distinctly unreal. They do not move the hearers because the speakers themselves are not moved; there are no convictions involved. College debates, particularly in the larger universi

ties, do not evoke the interest of the general student body nor do they call out the talents of the real college leaders. The trouble lies, not in the fact that debating is unimportant, but that, as we carry it on, it lacks actuality. The average college undergraduate is about as interested in dialectics as the average prize-fight fan is in sparring for points. We suspect that the average college undergraduate is nearer right than those who bemoan the general public lack of interest in intercollegiate debates.

AS SHE PASSES
BY HAZEL HALL

HE has beauty, she has youth.
What is time, what is truth?

Her tread sings along the street. What are old and groaning feet?

Life, a lover suave and gay, Companions her upon her way.

He whispers of a tryst to-morrow. What is betrayal, what is sorrow?

become a more and more common occurrence since the war and make an interesting contribution to the cause of international sympathy and understanding. Now debating is added to the activities in which American students are mingling with their British cousins and coming thereby to know them better. It seems assured of being a permanent fixture. Bates College pioneered in 1921 by crossing to meet the pick of Oxford on the platform. This year the crack debating team of New York University argued the advisability of America canceling the Interallied war debts with the lads of Oxford, of Sheffield, and of Edinburgh. At all three places the vote overwhelmingly favored cancellation, a commentary not so much on the merits of the debating as on the state of mind of the British college students, decisions in British collegiate debate resulting not from the opinion of appointed judges, but from the general voting of the audience. The New York boys affirmed the

1 An editorial on college debating appears on the previous page.

BY GEORGE L. MOORE

motion to cancel in the Sheffield and Edinburgh encounters, and denied it at Oxford. So pleased were the Oxonians at the Americans taking the side on which their convictions were thought not to belong that they passed public compliments on the Americans' sportsmanship. This September they will come to America to return the visit of Bates and of New York and to meet other college debating teams, which is one evidence that international college debating is a "recognized institution."

It offers a valuable means of measuring in comparison the products of English and American universities because it elicits powers of manhood whose development is more specifically the task of the school and college than building athletic prowess. Debate is not a major sport in America, of course. It is always humble in the presence of the football team, and is grateful for any crumbs remaining after the feasts of those heroes. Yet the meetings of the American students with the best debaters of Oxford in the historic Oxford Union, which has trained scores of great British statesmen and leaders in the art of public expression, and with the sons of

1

Edinburgh and of Sheffield, put our college product into more striking comparison with England's than any number of crew races, tennis matches, or track competitions. The New York University team were all impressed, for one thing, with what they consider certain points in which the British system of conducting a debate is superior to that used by most American colleges. There are no judges brought in from outside upon whose opinion the decision rests. Instead, the will of the auditors is expressed by balloting. The manner of procedure at Oxford is embellished by tradition and is solemnly carried through. At the other universities some of the tradition, perhaps, is lacking,,but the system is identical. The chairman of the debate proposes the motion. At Oxford he is the president of the Union and is seated on a sort of throne. This year's president is an American, R. M. Carson, of Oriel, a Rhodes man and a fine representative, incidentally, of American scholarship. The presidency of the Union is considered the highest honor at Oxford. Mr. Carson is always pointed out to visitors as "the American who made us vote for prohibition." This

achievement was the result of a speech he made at the Union on American prohibition. The achievement assumes considerable magnitude when one realizes that the typical Oxford attitude toward prohibition is amazed disbelief that it can exist anywhere.

When Mr. Carson, as chairman, proposes the motion, the first speaker affirms it, followed by a speech of negation, two more speeches (one of affirmation and one of denial), and one speech from each side to sum up. So far the procedure is not unlike that used in America, but from now on it is radically different. In an American college music or some other form of entertainment is introduced at this point to lull the minds of the audience until the judges have made their decision. In England the fun is just beginning. When the chosen debaters of the evening complete their arguments, the question is open for discussion by the house. In all three of the contests of the American team this year this was the longest and most interesting part of the meeting. One speech , from the floor was twenty minutes in length and surpassed the efforts of the debaters themselves for scope of understanding and trenchancy of expression. At Edinburgh adherents of the Labor, Socialist, Conservative, and Liberal point of view fought keenly for supremacy. When the chairman deems the forum closed, the vote is taken. There are two doors, one for the ayes and another for the noes, and all the members of the house choose their exits with care, depositing their votes in the two boxesaye and no-provided for the purpose. At Oxford these receptacles are heavy carved oak, darkened by age; and Tradition that ubiquitous fellow-has decreed that the aye box is a square foot greater in capacity than the no, for no other reason than tradition and that the boxes, of course, were made that size.

The general effect of this forum method of procedure and the popular

vote is to keep interest in debating quick and fresh. The audience is more responsive than an American debate audience, and it is larger. One isn't admitted except by ticket! Many an alumnus of an American college will remember being begged to attend a debate "to support the team."

The reason for an English university man going to a debate is that he is interested in the question at issue and more than likely plans to say something for his opinion. This difference in attitude and motive reveals an interesting contrast between what the student across the Atlantic thinks about and talks about and the mind of his American cousin. What surprised the American debaters this year more than anything else was the table talk and other conversation of the British collegian. He is a keen student of politics and social questions, and isn't ashamed to make them subjects of every-day discussion along with cricket and rowing. His conversation is witty, bright, clever, full of chaffing and joshing, but much more solidly based than American college talk. The Oxonian, the Edinburgh undergrad, and the Sheffield man showed themselves possessed of information and able to give it out easily and interestingly and to receive in kind. This ability is reflected in the debates, which are conducted in the conversational style. Formal argument in a solid, businesslike, "cold facts" manner, which is the substance of the American college forensic style, is rarely used. Debate in Britain is made to serve a desire to acquire a clear, cogent, and interesting manner of speech. Expressing his views as brilliantly as possible is the sole justification for debating, in the opinion of the British collegian, and so rooted is this point of view in the university consciousness that the American debaters were courteously advised not to regard the recent rencontres as academic contests, but merely as "a friendly interchange of views."

The amount of wit, humor, and whimsicality in the British speeches amazed their American antagonists, who had been trained to use humor carefully and in the form of a story with a point. Spontaneous wit was sprinkled through all of the other discourse, from both the debaters and the speakers from the floor. Occasionally it seemed irrelevant, as when one of the young Oxonians began his pleading somewhat as follows:

Dear Mr. Chairman (pause)

I am going to be confidential (long pause)

I have a brother (whispered) He occasionally (pause) speaks to me (pause)

Recently he finished his studies here and decided to sip from the spring of knowledge in an American university.

He matriculated (prolonged pause)
Soon afterward he became ill.

And more in the same vein. There were also some facts in his discourse, but he had somehow acquired the gift of using them for penetrability rather than for weight. What such a speaker lacks in capacity to impress he gains in the ability to amuse and entertain, which is often a better method of cultivating receptivity in an audience than gravity and a businesslike array of facts.

All of the English college debaters cultivate the light, deft touch. Those who admire Chesterton and Shaw attempt the paradox and the aphorism, and do them rather well. They even garnish their table talk with this sort of thing.

Because their debating reflects the student psychology it may prove a salutary influence on American student thought and opinion to hear the Oxonians next year, although they will miss the setting of the Union, saturated with memories of Rossetti, William Morris, and others of England's great, and filled with hundreds of young men eager to hear and to be heard.

the returning wanderer who has been absent for any space of time France must always appear to merit her title of "La Belle," but this summer, which everywhere in northern Europe has been cool and wet, her beauty is more obvious than ever. Her fertile fields, luxuriant trees, and overflowing streams give evidence this year of the kindness of nature, and even the grimness of her battlefields and stricken towns is mitigated by an abundant growth of weeds and wild flowers, as well as by the devotion and industry of reconstructive hands. Tales of a cruel

BY FRANCIS ROGERS drought come from southern France, but this has not spread so far north as the tourists' customary summer routes. The value of the dollar, which everywhere on the Continent is, after the weather, the prime topic of conversation of all American travelers, has not decreased in the past twelve months. The French franc is still worth only about eight cents (pre-war value nineteen), the Belgian franc even less. Prices for those who think in dollars are still appreciably less than American prices. One can board and lodge in a convenient quarter of Paris for five dollars a day, and away

from the metropolis, if one avoids the haunts of pretense and fashion, for less. Commodious motors may be hired at the rate of about thirty cents a mile. For the American, then, life in France is, as it always has been, easy and, compared with conditions at home, inexpensive.

Four years of peace have not robbed Verdun of its aspect and general atmosphere of romance and heroic conflict. There remain still in the city many evidences of destruction, but these are gradually disappearing, and on every hand one sees activity in reconstruction.