However, we must adapt ourselves to the needs of the times, recognize the supremacy of the well equipped scientific laboratory as the proving ground, if not the temple, of the present age; and we must realize that we shall not have done with the relics of barbarism until well informed, well trained men and women mount the rostrum in the interests of tested enlightenment.

Project. Just as an experiment, for practice, suppose you give a talk on Medieval and Modern Truth Seekers. Use pantomime all you wish to. Actively show a picture of the torture chamber. Describe it. Act the parts of the officials and of the victim. Then contrast this with a scene in a modern bacteriological laboratory. Let your imaginary audience see the scientist laboring over his test tubes. Let them share his elation over a successful experiment. Conclude with an interpretation of the contrast between the two methods. Let your point of view be what it will. Use somewhat different situations if you wish; but make the performance vital, vivid, dramatic.

2. The Only Truth Which Can Be Trusted Is The Truth Which Can be Tested.

So long as research workers take no vacations from their test tubes, so long as they remain closeted with their experiments like hermits in their caves, so long as their collegiate disciples emulate the mole and the oyster, the inhabitants and graduates of our higher institutions of learning will continue to connive with the bigot and the despot and shift the burden of scientific evangelism upon the one profession which is conscious of its modern social obligation, journalism.

The college student who is enamored of the scientific methods of discovering useful truths through testing hypotheses, through accurate measurements and controls,

has an ever increasing number of opportunities to function as a citizen of his age by the development of his speaking possibilities. The time which any student spends in reading this book will be justified if he attempts to apply its suggestions during his college years and after, with a sense of responsibility and a development of methods neither suggested nor realized by the author.

Project. Here is a project which may prove to be difficult. You are the official who has been in charge of the trial by torture. Make a report to your superiors of what you did to the defendant. Repeat his confessions. You might give a dramatic monologue, somewhat after Browning's manner. First, read Browning's, "My Last Duchess."

3. World Progress Has Been Caused By A Few Great Thinkers In Action.

Modern colleges and universities have justified their existence as trainers of the mind, as stuffers of the brain, as coaches of the body in action on the athletic field. These functions and services are altogether desirable. Yet these trainings are inadequate and insufficient.

A state university senior expressed himself a few months ago in some such words as these: "If there is anything that gives me a pain it's a guy who's always shooting off his mouth. Let 'im rave. Give me a bird every time who knows his onions. Brains is the thing. Take the average loud speaker, the professional magnivox. What's he got to talk about? Nothing. The great American indoor and outdoor sport is ballyhoo. No matter how thin you slice it... Believe me, there oughta be a law to suppress these here oratory profs. All they do is make the world safe for applesauce."

In spite of a variety of grammatical and vocal defects

which, in a way, proved the sincerity of his conviction, he was giving an exhibition of rather impassioned and effective speaking. In a broad-minded spirit he enrolled in a speech course and developed, through his own efforts, from a diffident, slovenly, somewhat prejudiced speaker, into a fairly successful popularizer of scientific achieve

ment.

With his original and somewhat typical point of view, as an alumnus he might have been inclined to vote for millions for chemical and physical laboratories, quite rightly, but not one cent for oral English. Now he realizes. that there are actually speech laboratories, stocked with equipment devised and built with the aid of engineers and electricians, and that there are professors of speech who are experimenting and testing and proving by methods at least as reputable as those of the workers in the social sciences.

If

So called "pure" science, some of whose devotees are engaged in research apparently more for its own sake than for life's sake, has been branded as cold and inhuman. this charge is true it is not merely because research men have been chained to their Bunsen burners and microscopes, but also because scientific apprentices and journeymen have been chilled by the laboratory-table soapstone and made suspicions or afraid of the lecture platform.

Activity generates thought; thought, activity. Both are advanced by vocal interpretation and active expression. College workers must hang together, less for their mutual benefit than for the beneficent advancement of the arts and sciences. For every action there is a measurable reaction, plus infinite interaction.

Project. Try this on your laboratory furniture, which you can visualize as an appreciative audience. You have just completed a successful experiment. You know that you will be obliged to report it to your scientific col

leagues. Practice your report. Go through the significant motions, illustrating exactly what you have done with your test tubes, cultures, and slides. You may repress your elation; but you are very much in earnest.

1. The Industrial Revolution Is Revolving In A Circle.

When you have earned money enough to build a house you will learn that what you can afford is a Model T exactly like a thousand others. Deviate from the printed plans and the contractor, plumber, electrician, and painter will drive you into bankruptcy.

Let us imagine that you have a thousand dollars to speed on an automobile. You listen to the salesmen representing Nash, Dodge, Chrysler, Pontiac, and a dozen others. Each has impressive talking points. The models all look alike. The motors sound the same. They all speed faster than is heathful. You are uniformly thrilled and confused, and deal with the company which gives you the highest trade-in value on your ancient vehicle.

"How about the movies?" you suggest. Which theatre? The Parthenon? The Pantheon? The Melodeon? Each has a little more statuary and gilt paint somewhere than the others. The actors are the same, or will be by next week. The plots are either non-existent or variations upon the ancient and honorable themes of Heroine— Hero-Villain-Sweet Mother-Rich Father-Devilish Juvenile. Flip a coin. You can't lose, or win.

The machine age is doubling back upon itself. Factory engineers break a mold only when it is worn out or a competitor risks his reputation with a new model which takes the public fancy. Skyscrapers, apartments, gardens, amusements, clubs, sects, schools, speeches are modeled according to the ideals of economy of space and time,

standardized. All of this has an elevating effect upon physical standards of living, helps to provide more leisure, promotes peace, and quiets the nerves. You either like it or hate it or "don't care"; but it is bad for the cause of those who love effective public speech.

Yet the times are good for those who can be original in a pleasing way, who can shatter complacency and stimulate constructive thinking, who can be unconventional without hurting the feelings of well bred people, and who can remove bronze idols from their pedestals as though it were an act of reverence.

a cause.

There never has been any condition or effect without Railroads, telegraphs, telephones, concrete highways, airmail, broadcasting stations, billion dollar corporations, gigantic national advertising agencies, magazines with weekly circulations into the millions, moving pictures, movietones, rotogravure sections . . . have all contributed to the standardization of our life and thought. Increased mobility is making robots of us all. Is it no longer sensible or even possible to develop a good speaking voice, platform effectiveness? There are more speech opportunities than ever before, more need than ever before for the college trained and skilled young man or young woman who can raise standards without standardizing, who can contribute to the interest and variety and worth of the common and the uncommon life.

Project. Buy or borrow a copy of Karel Kapek's play, "R.U.R." (Rossom's Universal Robots). Select a scene in which Robots take an important part; for example, the scene in which the Robot librarian is threatened with being sent to the stamping mill. Interpret and read it aloud.

2. Some Orators Acclaim THESE United States.

In some college classes and clubs this sort of situation. arises: Volunteers