Illustrated Reviewed by Bliss Perry

The opening contribution to the Football Number of the Harvard Illustrated Magazine is from the President of the United States. It will be read to the very end with unabated interest. None of the President's recent utterances is so likely to win unanimous assent in this part of the country, although the public has long been aware that President-elect Taft holds diametrically opposite views.

There will be differences of opinion with regard to the validity of the argument advanced by Professor Royce in his notable contribution to the unending discussion of the ethics of football. As to the candor and suggestiveness of the presentation all readers will agree. Taking the development of loyalty as the test of the ethical value of the sport, Professor Royce examines the temper, not of the players but of the spectators. Extravagant publicity, distracting and confusing social influences, many of the evils of the mob spirit, are undeniably present. It is not so clearly demonstrable that the game, under present conditions of attendance, favors "in the mass of spectators a loyal life and a practical love of loyalty." This is Professor Royce's test of the real value of the game. To confute him would require considerable skill in what Daniel Webster once called "the arithmetic of Heaven." Meanwhile Professor Royce invites all who disagree with him to use their opportunities, as spectators, as a means of making themselves more loyal and devoted men. This invitation ought to be widely accepted, even if it should result in the demolition of an interesting and public-spirited argument.

Captain Burr's modest and straight-forward account of the development of the team, Mr. Watts's survey of the football season, and Mr. Fisher's description of the present condition of the Trophy Room, complete the November tribute to outdoor sports. Mr. A. K. Jones, who rang the College bell for fifty years, is the subject of a brief article with portraits. "Says Butler" is a good character sketch, well within the range of undergraduate observation and handling. Mr. Lippman's "Reply" to Professor Wendell's "Privileged Classes" shows keen and clever fencing without quite coming to a precise issue with his involuntary antagonist. A readable summary of Professor Coolidge's "The United States as a World Power," and an editorial upon the resignation of President Eliot, are also among the features of this uncommonly good number.