The second class of subjects, those for which the material is drawn wholly from reading, is the most common in intercollegiate and interscholastic debates.  Should the United States army canteen be restored, Should the Chinese be excluded from the Philippines, Should the United States establish a parcels post, are all subjects with which the ordinary student in high school or college can have little personal acquaintance.  The sources for arguments on such subjects are to be found in books, magazines, and official reports.  The good you will get from arguments on such subjects lies largely in finding out how to look up material.  The difficulty with them lies in their size and their complexity.  When it is remembered that a column of an ordinary newspaper has somewhere about fifteen hundred words, and that an editorial article such as on page 268, which is thirty-eight hundred words long, is in these days of hurry apt to be repellent, because of its length, and on the other hand that a theme of fifteen hundred words seems to the ordinary undergraduate a weighty undertaking, the nature of this difficulty becomes clear.  To put it another way, speeches on public subjects of great importance are apt to be at least an hour long, and not infrequently more, and in an hour one easily speaks six or seven thousand words, so that fifteen hundred words would not fill a fifteen-minute speech.  This difficulty is met in debates by the longer time allowed, for each side ordinarily has an hour; but even then there can be no pretense of a thorough treatment.  The ordinary written argument of a student in school or college can therefore do very little with large public questions.  The danger is that a short argument on a large question may breed in one an easy content with a superficial and parrotlike discussion of the subject.  Discussions of large and abstract principles are necessary, but they are best left to the time of life when one has a comprehensive and intimate knowledge of the whole mass of facts concerned.

By far the best kind of subject, as has been said, is that which will combine some personal acquaintance with the facts and the possibility of some research for material.  Many such subjects may be found in the larger educational questions when applied to your own school or college.  Should the elective system be maintained at Harvard College, Should the University of Illinois require Latin for the A.B. degree, Should fraternities be abolished in——­High School, Should manual training be introduced in——­High School, are all questions of this sort.  A short list of similar questions is printed at the end of this section, which it is hoped will prove suggestive.  For discussing these questions you will find considerable printed material in educational and other magazines, in reports of presidents of colleges and school committees, and other such places, which will give you practice in hunting up facts and opinions and in weighing their value.  At the same time training of your judgment