Evening star., 1928-10-19
US. ORATOR GIVEN APPROVAL
OF AUDIENCES VOTE AT FINALS
James R. Moore Runs Ahead of Any
Other Contestant In Balloting,
Compilation Shows.

James r. Moore, Somerset, KY, the
youth who championed the United
States in the Third International Ora
! torical Contest finals here last Saturday
night was the plurality choice of the
audience for first place, according to
the compilation of the 4031 ballots cast
by the audience of more than 5000 per-
sons at the request fo Randolph Leigh,
contest director general. Moore was
given fourth place in the official rating
of the multi-linguist judges, and in the
audience ballot, while he did not re-
ceive majority of the votes cast, he
polled more votes than any other one
contestant.
Rene Ponthieu, the French represent
tive, who was declared by the official
:dgeS winner Of first honors and the
world championship, was rated third by
| the audience, while William Fox, young
Canadian whom the judges placed in
third position, was scaled second by the
popular vote. Both Fox and Ponthieu
received only a few less votes than did
Moore, and their positions in the audi
ence rating, like More'S, is arrived at on
plurality basis Jose de Tomaso, Ar
gentina'S spokesman in the meet, who
was given second place by the official
| judges, was dropped to sixth place by
the audience.
Interesting Facts Revealed.
The audience ballot revealed many
interesting facts Of the 4,031 who cast
ballots 230 indicated that they under
stood all four of the languages. Com
pillng the votes of these members of the
audience alone, it was found that the
French boy, choice of the judges, would
have received victory had the 230 been
the official jurors. This would seem to
indicate that where all Of the languages
are understood more of the listeners
would rate Ponthieu for first place than
would give that position to any other
contestant Fox received second place
by these 230 audience multi-linguists
while Moore, the American, won third
place in their Judgment. These $50
men and women differed radically with
the official judges only in the case of
Jose de Tomaso, the Argentine, whom
they placed in sixth position against
his official third-place rating
A count of the audience ballots show
ed that by virtue of the contestants re-
spective languages having been checked,
1.178 understood Ponthieu, j755 under
stood the three Spanish speakers, Effrain
Brito Rosado of Mexico, Jose Gle To-
maso of Argentina and Julio Cesar Fer
ndnQeZ OF CuDa, ana fUZ UNDERSTOOD
Heinz Barth, the German The count
showed further that 226 understood
French, German and English; 1913 un-
derstood French, Spanish and English
and 81 understood German, Spanish
and English. A total of 1926 indicated
that they understood only English.
Statement by Mr.. Leigh.
Attention is called by Mr. Leigh to the
fact that these foreign language statis-
tics overlap. For instance, he points
out, in determining how many persons
could understand the French speaker,
the exclusively French ballots were
added to all the other ballots on
which French was checked in combi-
| nation with one or more languages. The
same plan was applied to determine the
number who understood Spanish and
German.
When it came to determining the
groups such as French-Spanish Ger
man. FrenchS Spanish English, German
Spanish English. and so on, a different
plan was followed Each group was
kept to itself and the ballots in the
larger groups of languages (four Ian
guages, for example) were not included
in the tabulations of the smaller ones.
Thus. it is indicated, Mr. Leigh de-
clareS, that if person knew more than