CHAPTER IVGETTING READY
You have been challenged to debate by the Patrol from Readville or by the Debating Society of Berkeley. What is the next step? You should meet your opponents as early as possible and arrange the details with them.
Since the challenge set the question, that point is taken care of. The settlement of terms and issues, which is so important that I shall discuss it by itself in Chapter V, will provide for many things which would otherwise bother you much in your actual debate. Your conference with your friends the enemy will obviate so much haggling about shifting the burden of proof and defining terms that the ground will be cleared for real work when you actually get at your debate.
If your purpose is to get at the truth, not simply to win, you will of course at this preliminary conference seek to find as much common ground as possible. You want to equalize the contest. You have no desire to equip one side with a keen sword and a splendid shield and the other with a clumsyclub. You will seek, therefore, so to formulate the point at issue between you that it will be a comparatively equal task for each side to find and present its evidence and its arguments.
Don’t try to trap the other side into some unfortunate position which will prove its undoing. Note the difference: in the actual debate, be merciless to your opponent’sargument, but before the debate and during it, treat him frankly and generously. Trail down his argument, track it to its lair, flay it, have no respect or mercy to it, but be sure you are remorselessly pursuing thecontentionand not thecontender.
Don’t hold back information at this conference which may change the whole plan agreed upon if you introduce it in the debate itself. In other words be honest and be fair. You are under no obligation to tell the other side how you propose to handle your case, how you propose to develop your argument, how you expect to prove it, what you regard as essential and what subordinate. You must be fair, however, as to what the question really means.
You should be equally fair and frank with your colleagues. In the first place be square with them in the division of the work. Take your full share and do what you agree to do. Don’t leave things until the last minute and then depend upon hasty cramming to make up the lack of real work. Knowa little something about all the case and all there is to know about your part of it.
Arrange your time and place and then decide upon the order in which you will speak. A very common procedure is:
No, a seven minutes’ speech is not very long but longer bursts of eloquence are likely to be tiresome. It is much better to have a short snappy debate full of interest and prevented from giving weariness by the constant change of speakers than to have ponderous proceedings. Moreover, in the schedule given above, fifty-two minutes is consumed, and that’s quite a while. Of course the number of contestants may vary and the time allotted each may be varied also.
Who shall preside? Well, if you have a club of your own, your president or in his absence, your vice-president, would naturally preside. If you should desire to pay some person a compliment, someone else may be asked, provided, of course,it was agreeable to the two officers who are by the rules of society work, entitled to that honor. If you have no formal organization, you can select anyone you choose. In doing so, you and your opponents would select someone who is dignified yet kindly, one who will not allow any “rough house” or boisterous conduct but who is respected by and fond of boys and who is, of course, absolutely fair.
Of course you must select your judges, generally three. Do not think, however, that it is an easy task to judge a debate. Choose no one as a judge who may have a personal prejudice for or against one of the speakers. If he is but indifferently or lazily honest, he is likely to favor his friend. If he is conscientious, he may in his very effort to be fair, and not lean toward his friend, lean the other way and really be unfair to him.
Choose as a judge no one who is known to have a prejudice on the question itself. The harassed judge must never forget that he is deciding on the merits of the debate, not on the merits of the question. He must weigh the arguments presented, paying no attention to other arguments, weighty to him, but left behind in the armory by the warring debater.
Because this task is so onerous and, indeed, so valuable in its training, it is an excellent plan to have members of your group—society, class or patrol or whatever it may be—act as judges. Thepractice in so weighing arguments and evidence will be invaluable to them when their time to debate comes around. In formal contests, however, you will call upon teachers, lawyers, ministers; men who are trained to think clearly and definitely and whose decision will mean something as fairly standing for the judgment of your community. For it is to this community judgment your real debate in life must appeal, and you must learn as soon as possible to aim at no less a tribunal.
So difficult is judging, that to theAppendix, beginning on page 153, I have added a chapter designed to be helpful.