Finally, debating should share the zest that comes of any good game that means hard work and an honorable struggle with opponents one respects and likes. It is preeminently a social occupation. The House of Commons has long been noted as the best club in England; and this sense of fellowship, of continuing friendship and intimacy, gives a charm to English parliamentary life which is hardly possible with the unwieldy numbers and huge hall of our own House of Representatives, but does spring out of the smaller and continuing membership of the Senate. A class in debating should have the sense of comradeship which comes of hard work together and the trying out of one's own powers against one's equals and betters, and from the memory of hard-fought contests; and intercollegiate and interscholastic contests should be carried on in the same spirit of zest in the hard work, of a sane desire to win, and of comradeship with worthy opponents.
EXERCISES
1. Name three questions in national affairs which have been debated within a month, on which you could profitably debate; three in state affairs; three in local affairs.
2. Name two subjects affecting your school or college which are under debate at the present time.
3. Name two subjects on which you could write an argument, but which would not be profitable for debate. Explain the reason.
4. Name two good subjects for a debate drawn from athletics; two from some current academic question; two from local or municipal affairs.
5. Find a proposition in which the two sides to a debate might in good faith pass each other without meeting. Make it over so that the issue would be unavoidable.
6. Frame a proposition in which the burden of proof would not be on the affirmative. Make it over so that the burden of proof would fall on the affirmative.
7. Draw up a scheme for a debate on one of the propositions in Exercise 4, with a tentative assignment of points to three debaters on a side.
8. Draw up a set of instructions to judges for an intercollegiate or interscholastic debate, so framed as to produce a decision on the points which seem to you the most important.