President Eliot Defended.

The Nation for February 7 says editorially of President Eliot's recent remarks about football in his annual report:

"President Eliot's characterization of intercollegiate football, in his annual report, is the utterance of a man who refuses to surrender either his reason or his responsibility to a popular and passing craze. Out of the mouths of the apologists for the game, he condemns it. They would restrain on the day of the great match the brute instincts which they have been sedulously cultivating through three months of training by "employing more men to watch the players," so as to prevent foul and vicious playing. What sane man can dispute President Eliot's conclusion that "a game which needs to be so watched is not fit for genuine sportsmen"? Nor will it be any easier for men whose livelihood or fame or animal gratifications do not depend upon the game, to disagree with his verdict that it is "unfit for college use." In this be speaks as the educator, mindful of his duty to the young men under his care and to their parents; farther on he speaks as an American citizen who would not see the intellectual and moral standards of his countrymen turned topsy-turvy."