Preparation. The proposition should be decided on and the teams selected long enough in advance to allow for adequate preparation. Every means should be employed to secure sufficient material in effective arrangement. Once constituted, the team should consider itself a unit. Work should be planned in conference and distributed among the speakers. At frequent meetings they should present to the side all they are able to find. They should lay out a comprehensive plan of support of their own side. They should anticipate the arguments likely to be advanced by the other, and should provide for disposing of them if they are important enough to require refuting. It is a good rule for every member of a debating team to know all the material on his side, even though part of it is definitely assigned to another speaker.
This preliminary planning should be upon a definite method. A good outline to use, although some parts may be discarded in the debate itself, is the following simple one.
I. State the proposition clearly.
1. Define the terms.
2. Explain it as a whole.
II. Give a history of the case.
1. Show its present bearing or aspect.
III. State the issues.
IV. Prove.
V. Refute.
VI. Conclude.
Finding the Issues. In debating, since time is so valuable, a speaker must not wander afield. He must use all his ability, all his material to prove his contention. It will help him to reject material not relevant if he knows exactly what is at issue between the two sides. It was avoiding the issue to answer the charge that Charles I was a tyrant by replying that he was a good husband. Unless debaters realize exactly what must be proven to make their position secure, there will be really no debate, for the two sides will never meet in a clash of opinion. They will pass each other without meeting, and instead of a debate they will present a series of argumentative speeches. This failure to state issues clearly and to support or refute them convincingly is one of the most common faults of all debating. In ordinary conversation a frequently heard criticism of a discussion or speech or article is "But that was not the point at issue at all." These issues must appear in the preliminary plans, in the finished brief, and in the debate itself.
The only point in issue between us is, how long after an author's death the State shall recognize a copyright in his representatives and assigns; and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational man that this is a point which the legislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to be most conducive to the general good.
Thomas Babington Macaulay: Copyright, 1841
Mr. President, the very first question that challenges our attention in the matter of a league of nations is the question of whether a war in Europe is a matter of concern to the United States. The ultraopponents of any league of nations assert that European quarrels and European battles are no concern of ours. If that be true, we may well pause before obligating ourselves to make them our concern. Is it true?
Senator P.J. McCumber: The League of Nations, 1919
The best method of finding the issues is to put down in two columns the main contentions of both sides. By eliminating those entries which are least important and those which have least bearing upon the present case the issues may be reduced to those which the debate should cover. Any possible attempt to cloud the issues on the part of the opposing side can thus be forestalled. All the speakers on one side should participate in this analysis of the proposition to find and state the issues.
The New York Tribune, by parallel columns, brought out these chief points of difference between the Paris plan and Senator Knox's for the League of Nations.