Magazine Articles by Harvard Graduates.

A critical article on "English and American University Athletics," by John Corbin '92, appears in the October Outing, and ought by reason of its practical value to attract wide attention. The author knows his subject thoroughly, having represented one of the numerous colleges in football and the University itself in track athletics.

Only within recent years has an interest been felt either by English or American university men in international athletic contests. The growing familiarity of each with the other has therefore revealed wide differences not only in the technical features of various events, but in the prevailing spirit of sportsmanship as well. "Granted, the common love of out-of-door sports, the two countries differ in almost every particular. . . . Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Cornell, merely to speak the names in a single breath raises an atmosphere of jealous and aggressive rivalry. . . . Oxford, Cambridge -- there is an immediate suggestion of fifteenth century architecture, overgrown with ivy." In a word, English athletics have none of that bitterness too often seen here when some disputed point of small importance is held up to public view for weeks by the daily press. Such publicity, according to English ideas, smacks too strongly of professionalism, or at least lays undue emphasis on something that should be merely the recreation of gentlemen, not the object in life for the time being of all interested.

"In the actual training of the team, the differences between the two countries is no less marked. In America . . . training is a matter of loyal duty, almost of religion. . . . In England there is no call for candidates, and when I asked to whom I should report, my question was not understood. . . . There was, of course, no professional trainer. I was not expected to report to anyone.'

Matters of diet, exercise and general training, too, are much less carefully guarded than in America. There can be no doubt according to Mr. Corbin, that our system puts too great a strain on one set of nerves and muscles, in such sports as running, at least; a fact which results in staleness long before the body as a whole reaches its highest condition. "Still," he continues, "as far as results are concerned our methods, taken by and large, are undoubtedly better. Mr. Horan, president of the Cambridge team that ran against Yale in 1895, made a careful study of American training. He told me that our superiority was unquestionable, but that it seemed to him hardly worth the cost."

This superiority, however, is being widely recognized in England, and has lately resulted in an attempt to close the Henley Regatta to Americans rather than raise the standards of training and watermanship. Taking into consideration the spirit of modern times toward progress and competition, this seems anything but a good plan, for with all their faults American methods are the methods that should in the end prevail.

Of the other articles by Harvard men in the current magazines the most interesting is Dean Briggs's essay on "College Honor" in the Atlantic Monthly.

Other articles by Harvard men in the October magazines are:

Atlantic--"Carnival in the North," by Francis T. Palmer '87; "Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic," by Henry A. Clapp '60.

Century--"The Practice of Law in New York," by Henry E. Howland, LL B., '57; "How to Cross the Atlantic in a Balloon," by Cleveland Abbe '94; "A French Government School from the Inside," by John Mead Howells '91.

Forum "Our National Debt," by Henry Sherman Boutell, M.C., '76.

Scribner's--"With the Cougar Hounds," by Theodore Roosevelt '80.

Harper's--"The New Psychology," by G. Stanley Hall '78; "Editor's Easy Chair," by W. D. Howells, h. '67.

Lippincott's--"The Polity of Nature," by Robert Herrick '90.