FROM A YALE GRADUATE.

NEW HAVEN, CONN., Dec. 1, 1897.

To the Editor of the Harvard Crimson:

SIR-While it is obvious that Yale men have no right, moral or legal, to criticise Harvard's methods of conducting her athletics and her system of training, the kindly and historic interest which Yale men take in Harvard's sportsmanship ought not to be resented.

Conversely, Harvard ought to reciprocate in kind. Each should suffer silently from mistaken policies.

Either has a moral right, however, to protest if the other forgets the amenities which are popularly ascribed to their long and traditional intercourse. Harvard's football players have a right not to wear the "H" if they consider their skill of too low a standard. They have no right, however, to remove the "H" when it implies an ungenerous criticism of an honored rival. But every Yale man can afford to pass that by unnoticed, since they readily understand the keen disappointment of your failure to win.

Some Yale men would not have felt very badly at the revival of victory at Cambridge and yet no Yale man can stifle his pride in his football team for this year. Every Yale man was gratified that the revived relationship between the two universities was attended by such equal manifestations of skill.

It is only when Harvard's failure to defeat Yale is publicly condemned as "a disgrace" that the ungenerosity cuts to the quick and provokes a startled cry. I quote from your comment upon the Pennsylvania game:

"The Harvard team played the best game of football of which they were capable, and kept it up to the very end. In this respect they came up to expectations and redeemed themselves from their former disgrace. Having done their best, they have shown themselves worthy to resume the "H," and they will doubtless do so with the full approbation of the university."

Now as a Yale man who has without variation supported Harvard in preference to all other colleges, his own alone excepted, and who has cheered its athletes upon all such occasions, I feel a right to direct your attention to your own lack of generosity and to express the hope that that sentiment is not the Harvard sentiment but only the immature sentiment of the writer. I do not care to discuss the various contests which certainly do not show it to be a disgrace for Harvard to have been tied by Yale, nor do I presume to criticise your judgment that a score against Pennsylvania is reason enough for the resumption of the "H."

I seek, simply, to establish the point that, in view of all the facts, you have, not consciously perhaps, but without sufficient consideration, passed a certainly gratuitous, if not actually an unfriendly criticism upon a foreman worthy of your steel.

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