HONORABLE DEFEATS.

Is anyone satisfied with Saturday's game? We hope not. After giving all due praise to the men who played so brilliantly, who can declare that any individual excellence will compensate for a defeat by Yale? Possibly the ideal of sport is a game in which the fun of playing eclipses the desire for victory. However unfortunately constituted, no real American team can feel that they have accomplished their purpose unless they at least break even with their strongest opponents.

Every fall we enthuse and the team fights its hardest. Then, after Yale has won by a narrow margin, some try to console us with the statement that we have done our best and suffered an honorable defeat. What ground for self-complacency does that offer us? We should call any man "yellow" who did not play the best he knew how against Yale.

An article appeared in yesterday's "Boston Globe which probably caused some indignation among those who read it. Very likely the writer does not express the real opinion of any but a small portion of Harvard men. But the sentiments which are voiced after every hard-fought Yale game are enough to justify him in his conclusions. "Isn't it about time for Harvard men to stop being satisfied with creditable defeat?" With this sentence the Globe writer introduces his arraignment of our attitude toward football. The accusation angers us at first; but how is the outsider to know how bitter each successive defeat is to a great majority of undergraduates and graduates? We conceal our disappointment under praises of the "splendid showing," and as a result each year is a repetition of the last and we have the not altogether enviable reputation of being "gentlemanly losers." Is it not time to throw aside the thin veil of easy-going optimism and to make it clearly known that nothing short of oft-repeated victories will give us cause for satisfaction?