Eugene O'Neill, Jr. and Frank Meyer

              HAROLD R. PEAT
presents
EUGENE O'NEILL, JR.
and
FRANK MEYER

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LIVELY DEBATES

Exciting Battles of Wits

Stimulating Discussions of Crucial Contemporary Issues.


DEBATES MODERNIZED, STREAMI INED.
Eugene O'Neill, jr. and Frank Meyer dispense with the formality that has traditionally robbed debates of much of their effectiveness.  After a brief statement of their views, instead of formal rebuttals, the speakers will fire questions at each other.  At the conclusion of the hour they will both answer any and all questions from the floor.

A real clash of two fine minds is the result.  A mutual friend of Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Meyer has this to say of their conversations: The most stimulating combats of enlightened intellects that I have ever had the privilege of hearing.

Close friends for almost a quarter century, Eugene O'Neill, jr. and Frank Meyer have finally been prevailed upon to transfer their exciting discussions from the living-room to the platform.




EUGENE O'NEILL JR.
Lecturer, university professor, radio artist, literary critic … Eldest son of America's ranking dramatist … B.A. and Ph.D. from Yale … Formerly Assistant Professor of Greek at Yale … has also taught at Sarah Lawrence and Princeton … Now lecturing at New School for Social Research, in New York.

By training a Classicist and an intellectual, Mr. O'Neill nevertheless believes that physical labor is essential to a rounded life … He has worked as ranch-hand, hay-stacker, lumberman … During the War he preferred the factory to the classroom … Operated a turret-lathe … Served as metallurgist's assistant … Worked as strander in wire-rope mill.

His intellectual activities have had equal breadth … His courses have dealt with ideas as well as books … with the Modern no less than the Ancient … with America just as much as with Greece and Rome.

He strongly believes in the educational value of radio and television … Has frequently been heard and seen on Invitation to Learning and The Author Meets the Critics. … Worked as radio actor, to learn the medium.

He refuses ever to wear dress clothes … He is most proud of his skill with an axe … His present hobby is the improvement of a bit of forest-land in the Catskill Mountains.



EDUCATION FOR WHAT?
Everyone agrees that American Education needs to be improved.  But how?  Shall we concentrate on providing a nearly perfect higher education for the Few, after the manner of Oxford and Cambridge?  Or shall we try to raise the educational level of everyone?

Which is more important, the method of teaching or the subject taught?  Should we emphasize training for democratic citizenship, or the imparting of useful information and profitable skills?  Can we perhaps do all these things, or must we select but a few of them?

The different educational backgrounds and experience of Frank Meyer and Eugene O'Neill, jr., make them uniquely fitted to give a fair and thought-provoking presentation of what is probably America's most pressing problem — What to do about Education-



CAN FREEDOM SURVIVE UNDER PLANNING?
One of the baffling problems of our time is how to reduce insecurity without sacrificing liberty.  The advocates of a planned economy are too prone to underestimate the value of Freedom.  The devotees of laissez faire, usually secure themselves, fail to perceive the horrors of insecurity.

Which must we be?  Insecure and free?  Or secure and enslaved?  Or can we somewhere find a middle ground, and there retain both Freedom and Security?

Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Meyer, agreeing on their basic values, take sharply opposed views on this important problem of today.  Their debate on this subject is of interest to every American, and of particular interest to the business-man who is trying to adjust himself to the perplexing actualities of present-day economic and political trends.



FRANK MEYER
Writer, lecturer, traveler, critic … and mellowed student of men and affairs in America, England, and on the Continent … a graduate of Oxford University … after work at Princeton … then advanced study and research at the London School of Economics, the Sorbonne and the University of Chicago …

A man of unusual breadth of interest and experience … Mr. Meyer's viewpoint has been conditioned and deepened by an active life of trial and error which has conterpointed his thought and study … at 40 his mature and firm democratic position is largely the result of having worked himself through and out of earlier radical views … the result is a rich wisdom, and an incisive enthusiasm for the ideas of our free society…

After service in the army … a lengthy recuperation from a series of operations … in this enforced retirement, Mr. Meyer wrestled with the fundamental problems disturbing the modern world … today he lives a busy life … writing a book on some of these fundamental problems … articles and book reviews … and in the intervals keeps himself busy with half-acre garden and a small orchard … and plays his part in the life of his community, where he is an officer of the American Legion and active in many other organizations.



IS PEACE OF MIND WORTH HAVING? — OR IS GUILT NECESSARY?
All of us would like to be at peace with our environment and satisfied with ourselves.  But even if we could achieve this, would it make our lives better?  Can we live fully without recognizing the existence of Evil, and the need to fight against it?  If so, how may we indulge ourselves in Peace of Mind?  On the other hand, if we concern ourselves too much with Evil how can we ever obtain the relaxation that we absolutely need?  How much Sense of Guilt do we have to have?  Can we steer a middle course, or must we choose one or the other extreme?

Eugene O'Neill, jr., and Frank Meyer offer contradictory and stimulating answers to these insistent questions of our time.



DEBATE ON A BEST-SELLER.
With sufficient notice, Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Meyer are able and willing to debate the merits of any book on a contemporary best-seller list.  Their variegated educational backgrounds and their experience as literary critics ensure an interesting discussion of both style and ideas.

What a people reads today can be an important index to what it is likely to be thinking tomorrow.  Best-sellers are therefore not to be dismissed with scorn.  Much can be learned from their study.  A discussion of such a book by Eugene O'Neill, jr., and Frank Meyer is certain to be entertaining as well as instructive, and to throw new and unsuspected light on the books that everybody is reading.



REASON, ROMANCE, AND RITUAL IN TWENTIETH CENTURY THOUGHT
This is the title of a series of four debates between Eugene O'Neill, jr., and Frank Meyer, at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences.  In these debates Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Meyer thoroughly examine Modern Thought in its historical setting — the inheritance from the 18th-Century Age of Reason — the Romantic influence of the 19th-Century — the mysterious elements of Ritual in 20th-Century ideology.

This stimulating discussion is available to any interested group, but it is too big for a single debate.  Two sessions are the absolute minimum.



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