Debate Debated

Last week the subject of a debate at Groton School became the subject of a difference between two New York columnists. In this corner, Gargantuan, dandy Lucius Beebe, who amiably considers Groton U. S. Educational Institution No. 1 because it stands at the top of the private school social scale. In that corner, Gargantuan, dowdy Heywood Broun, whose funny-bone never tingles pleasantly over reactionary boarding schools.

In This New York, his solemn column of social chitchat in the New York Herald-Tribune, Columnist Beebe reported: "It appears that the lads of the upper forms have their own debating teams, pick their own subjects and conduct their oratorical tournaments without let or hindrance from their instructors. Their last jousting was due to fall . . . just before close of school for the summer. . . . It was only toward the end that the headmaster, the Rev. Endicott Peabody, learned the topic under discussion, descended with outraged screams and howls upon the entire program, called everything off and retired to his study mopping his clerical brow over the narrowest call of his career. The lads had selected as a subject: 'Which of its graduates, Richard Whitney or Franklin D. Roosevelt, has brought more discredit to Groton?' "

Columnist Broun, fonder of Socialists than of socialites, at once cracked wise & down on Beebe, Peabody, and Groton, in his column It Seems to Me in the New York World-Telegram: "It may be held that Dr. Peabody was at fault in merely stopping the debate and not correcting the conditions in the school which made such an attitude possible. In all fairness to the reputation of the educator it should be pointed out that he has to handle a pretty solid phalanx of problem children.* The home influence is very bad in the case of many Groton boys. The lads are largely overnourished, overclad and burdened with the handicap of both town and country houses."

* Other celebrated Grotties: Joseph Clark Grew, Robert Rutherford McCormick, George Rublee, Oliver LaFarge.

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