Visit of the Columbia University Debating Team – 7th June 1923

In the 1920s and 30s, Columbia University and the Oxford Union engaged in regular debates.  In June 1923, the Columbia debating team accepted an invitation from the Union’s Standing Committee to visit the Union and debate America's role in the world, namely:

That America is justified in her abstention from the League of Nations

The United States, of course, never joined the League of Nations due to opposition from the U.S. Senate, even though U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, its main architect advocated for American participation. It was a period of American isolationism and conservatives and nationalists believed that the US should avoid entangling alliances and focus on domestic issues. 

The Isis issue of June 13th reported that motion was lost by 111 votes to 78, but not before some very passionate remarks from both sides. For example, the opening speaker for Columbia contended that  ‘America would not come into the League because she regarded the Treaty which created it as a crime.’ 

The Union’s Vice President at the time (Christopher Hollis, Balliol) reported, ‘it was a great pleasure to have the opportunity of hearing so able and combined a defence of the American position which has seemed to many people in this country difficult to understand and sympathise with.’  But on on the opposition’s first speaker, he commented: ‘He spoke rather too fast, and rather too much on the same note; when his voice did rise it became shrill, a fault of production which he could easily remedy’.