Mental Weight-lifter

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your editorial entitled "Unseen Spectators" is a wilderness of nonsense. "Since debating is primarily a spectacle, it is purposeless without spectators," it says. Harvard debating does not attract spectators, and "the result has been the forensic feebleness illustrated last week by the double loss to Yale." This is blockhead thinking.

Debating is not a spectacle (as a flea circus or a cock-fight is). It is an exercise in articulative facility and quick wit. It is intended to entertain no one except the participants. The relation you find between lack of spectators and last week's double loss to Yale is beyond the grasp of all natural intellects.

The quality of a debate is independent of the debate's audience. The system of four speeches and two rebuttals solicits ingenious organization and flexible logic. Debating, in short, is "mental weight-lifting," a strengthening exercise that would be unwasted on CRIMSON editorialists. Irving Yoskowitz '53