forcibly and to debate persuasively. No one who has kept in touch with the movements of student communities can have failed to notice the impulse that has been given to oratorical and forensic contests; the rejuvenation and the revivification of societies which were antiquated or dead; the increasing interest manifested in de bating; and, above all, the rise of intercollegiate debating and oratory. To the intercollegiate contest may be ascribed this increased rhetorical activity., for the sense of rivalry is a powerful agent. It served to infuse new life into athletic contests, and, profiting by the example, colleges have united for the purpose of holding in tellectual contests as well. Probably the most extensive combi nation of this kind existing in the Atlantic States consists of the Colleges Gettysburg, Franklin and Marshall, Muhlenberg, Lehigh, Lafayette, Swarthmore and Ursinus, These Colleges annually hold an intercollegiate oratorical contest, while for the purpose of intercollegiate debate we have, notably, the union of Cornell and Pennsylvania, of Harvard and Yale, and of Princeton and Harvard. Prominent as these affairs may be here in the East, they are the more so in the West. There these contests have been held for the last twenty-five years, and so perfect is the organization that interstate contests are held. Recently at Galesburg, 111., the States Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, lowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado were represented in such a contest, the representatives having been chosen in a " state contest," held between the colleges of each state. This league comprises about a hundred colleges, and " if a hundred colleges are thus concerned, it may he estimated that in each col lege an average of ten students will make more or less serious efforts to enter the preliminary or home contest, Thus the final victory may be considered as one gained over one thousand com petitors who have entered the lists at the outset. And when we consider the indirect influence of the contests upon the work of debating societies, and upon various other oratorical and literary efforts in the student communities of the West, the magnitude of the the oratorical impulse becomes apparent." In no literary enterprise can State ever hope to rank high, as she is but a technical school, and every effort will be made to maintain her excellence as such. That she has some literary
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