Let us analyze briefly the advantages of discussion. Genuine discussion is truth-seeking. First, then, it presses every man to think clearly and appreciatively and discriminatingly in order to take his part worthily. What we need above everything else is clear thinking. This need has been covered over by the demand for “honest” men, but hardly any one would say to-day, “Give the management of your city over to a group of the most honest men you can find.” A group of honest men—what a disconcerting picture the phrase calls up! We want efficient men, thinking men, as well as honest men. Take care of your thinking and your morals will take care of themselves—is a present which would have benefited certain reform campaigns. The first advantage of discussion then is that it tends to make us think and to seek accurate information in order to be able to think and to think clearly. I belong to a civic conference lunch club which meets once a month to discuss civic questions. On one occasion the program committee discovered a few days before the luncheon that on the question to be considered (a certain bill before the legislature), we were all of the same opinion, and so the discussion did not seem likely to be very lively. But it happened that our secretary knew some one who was on the other side, and this woman was therefore invited to be our guest and present her point of view to us. She accepted with pleasure as she said she felt strongly on the matter. On the morning of the day of our meeting, however, she telephoned that she could not come, as she had just read the bill, thinking it would be wise to do so before she publicly opposed it, and she found she agreed with it heartily! Moreover, no one question can be adequately discussed without an understanding of many more. Remedies for abuses are seldom direct because every abuse is bound up with our whole political and economic system. And if discussion induces thinking by the preparation necessary, it certainly stimulates thinking by the opposition we meet. But the great advantage of discussion is that thereby we overcome misunderstanding and conquer prejudice. An Englishman who visited America last winter said that he had seen in an American newspaper this advice, “Get acquainted with your neighbor, you might like him,” and was much struck with the difference between the American and the English way of looking at the matter. The Englishman, he said, does not get acquainted with his neighbor for fear he might like him! I sometimes feel that we refuse to get acquainted with the arguments of our opponents for fear we might sympathize with them. Genuine discussion, however, will always and should always bring out difference, but at the same time it teaches us what to do with difference. The formative process which takes place in discussion is that unceasing reciprocal adjustment which brings out and gives form to truth.