applause only to be bitterly disappointed in the end by
hearing the decision awarded to the other side. Recall the warnings
given in the previous chapters against the tempting fallacies of
appealing to crowd feelings and prejudices.

In classroom debates it is a good distribution of responsibility to
make all the members not participating in the speaking act as judges
and cast votes in rendering a decision. This makes the judges and the
audience one. Moreover it changes the mere listener into a
discriminating judge. If the instructor cares to carry this matter of
responsibility one step farther, he can ask the members of the class
to explain and justify their votes.

The audience, when it is also the judge, has the responsibility of
careful attention, analysis, and comparison. It is too much to expect
usual general audiences to refuse to be moved by unworthy pleas and
misrepresentations, to accord approval only to the best speakers and
the soundest arguments. But surely in a class of public speakers any
such tricks and schemes should be received with stolid frigidity.
Nothing is so damaging to appeals to prejudice, spread-eagleism, and
fustian bombast as an impassive reception.

The Judges. In any debate the judges are of supreme importance. They
decide the merits of the speakers themselves. The judges are of
infinitely more importance than the audience. In interscholastic
debates men of some prominence are invited to act as judges. In the
instructions to them it should be made clear that they are not to
decide which side of a proposition they themselves approve. They are
to decide which group of speakers does the best work. They should try
to be merely the impersonal registers of comparative merit. They
should sink their own feelings as every teacher must when he hears a
good speech from one of his own students supporting something to which
the instructor is opposed. Good judges of debates realize this and
frequently award decisions to speakers who support opposite positions
to their personal opinions. They must not be like the judges in an
interscholastic debate who announced their decision thus, "The judges
have decided that China must not be dismembered." That was an
interesting fact perhaps, but it had nothing to do with their duty as
judges of that debate.

In business, the buyer, the head of the department, the board of
directors, constitute the judges who render the decision. In
legislative assemblies the a