II. Assignment

Write an editorial in reply to an editorial in which a false position is assumed by the writer.

III. Model I

Vice-President Marshall’s declaration, made some time ago at Wabash College, that the old man is being shoved off the stage everywhere, needs revision, as does the opinion of another statesman that men over fifty are atrophied.

In the last great war between France and Germany the campaign was planned and led by elderly men. The Emperor William, then King of Prussia, was in his seventy-fourth year; Von Moltke, the master strategist of the war, was seventy-one years old; General von Roon was sixty-eight; and Bismarck, the master mind in the larger field, was in his fifty-sixth year.

In the next great war in which high military efficiency was displayed, Admiral Togo was approaching his sixtieth year when he took the field; Prince Oyama, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese forces in Manchuria, had passed his sixtieth year; Field Marshal Nodzu was sixty-three; Field Marshal Yamagata was sixty-six; General Kuroki was sixty; and General Nogi, who took Port Arthur after a series of desperate conflicts, carried on with unflinching energy and almost breathless rapidity, was nearly sixty years of age.

In the present war Lord Kitchener, the organizing genius of the English army, is sixty-four; and Sir John French, commanding the English forces in the field, is sixty-two. When Lord Roberts was sent to South Africa to snatch victory out of defeat, he was sixty-eight years of age.

On the French side, General Joffre is sixty-two; General Pau is sixty-six; General Castelnau, the third in command, is well advanced in the sixties; and General Gallieni, who is in command of the defenses of Paris, is seventy.

The German armies are also led by a group of elderly men. Count von Huelsenberg has reached the mature age of seventy-eight; Field Marshal von der Goltz is seventy-one; General von Kluck has reached his sixty-eighth year; General von Emmich was sixty-six; and General von Hindenberg is sixty-seven.

These figures suggest that, while fifty may be the deadline among Democratic statesmen, it appears to be a kind of life-line among great leaders abroad.—Adapted from The Outlook, November 11, 1914.[13]

IV. Analysis

Observe the framework. Paragraph 1 states the point to be proved. Paragraphs 2–5 are composed of examples, arranged thus:

  1. The War of 1871.
  2. The War of 1905.
  3. The Present War.
    1. France.
    2. England.
    3. Germany.

The order, in other words, is at once the order of chronology and that of climax, which combine to make the facts easy to remember. Paragraph 6 summarizes the argument and clinches it by a sharp antithesis.

V. Exercises

  1. Using a similar framework, write an editorial disproving by examples the point made by the writer of the model.
  2. Write an editorial proving by examples any proposition which you believe to be true and in which you are deeply interested.
  3. Prove or disprove by example any one of the following propositions:
    1. Left-hand batters are better than right-hand batters.
    2. Germans are better ball-players than Irishmen.
    3. Frenchmen cannot play ball.
    4. Men write better than women.
    5. Asphalt pavements are more durable than brick pavements.
    6. Germany has contributed more to the world’s culture than England.
    7. College graduates are more successful as statesmen than are self-made men.
    8. Very tall men have ever very empty heads.
    9. Athletes usually succeed well in after life.
    10. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a great wit. (For Johnson, substitute, if you wish, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Samuel Butler, Alexander Pope, Charles Lamb, Sidney Smith, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, or Mark Twain.)