Victory Gives Winners Lead in International Series

Outdoing their English rivals in repartee and in logic, the University debaters convinced a majority of their audience in Symphony Hall last night that uncompromising pacifism is the only effective attitude toward war, and won, 247 to 123. The University has now won three out of five debates in the international series.

The debate surged around the central question, "What is a pacifist?" John Ramage of the London School of Economics gave his conception of a pacifist as "An inverted militarist, one whose natural pugilistic instincts have somehow turned into fresher channels." Commenting with surprise upon the inconsistency of men who could play football, but were appalied at the thought of war. Ramage compared his opponents to the shades in Homer, who "drank blood, but could not look upon a man."

Feeling that the American arguments had been lacking in substance, Andrew Haddon of Edinburgh University gave vent to the boast that he would "smite them hip and thigh, and scatter the bones of their arguments to the four winds." The whole contention of the English speakers was that pacifism was a good peace time doctrine, but did not reach the fundamental causes of war.

The University speakers maintained that the uncompromising determination to outlaw war, expressed in an educational program for peace, and effective machinery for international arbitration of disputes, could alone succeed where the appeal to ultimate force has failed.

Taking sharp issue with the belief that war was the worst evil in the world, Haddon asked what would have become of the American contribution to civilization if the fathers of the Revolution had been "lily white pacifists." Even admitting that pacifism was a Christian doctrine, which he vigorously denied. Haddon pointed out that not one-tenth of the world even claimed to be Christian, and that the Mohammedan Koran taught reliance on the "long arm and glittering saber." War is essential to the enforcement of law among nations, just as punishment is needed for civil offences, Haddon maintained.

F.W. Lorenzen '28 denied the English claim that pacifism meant an idle folding of hands. He advocated education for peace as an effective expression of the pacifistic philosophy. Reviewing the tendency to glorify war in the schools. Lorenzen stated that the average student gets the impression that the history of mankind has consisted of glorious wars and a few periods of dull peace. This coloring of history is responsible for the human love of armed conflict, and an uncompromising pacifism must go into the school textbooks and give a true picture of war.

Maintaining that the causes of war lay in commercial and racial jealousies, F.O. Darvall advocated machinery for removing these causes of dispute, rather than a pacifistic relinquishment of the means of defense! "I take it that my opponents would have the American Navy abolished. That would be a capital bit of news to take back to the British Admiralty!"

Lorenzen answered this quip by saying:

"We hope the British Admiralty will be abolished by our propaganda before our guests return to England."

Summing up the affirmative case for the University in the concluding speech of the debate, Reel pointed out that his opponents were pacifists at heart, for they were opposed to war. "The only distinction is that we are uncompromising. There was no compromise in the militarism of the World War. There must be no compromise in our pacifism.