In Defense of Swimming.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

As an element in the athletic problem now under discussion, something ought to be said in behalf of the swimming team, and of swimming as a college interest. To be sure, little is heard of this branch of the minor sports, but that is mainly due to the lack of any University swimming pool, an institution which is needed, for obvious reasons, just as much as a new gymnasium. The swimming team has always been as much handicapped for want of a place in which to practice, as would be the University football team if it were confined throughout its season to the baseball cage. Yet swimming has actually done a great deal for the individuals who have tried for the team in the way of pleasurable exercise and a fair spirit of competition.

The attitude taken by swimmers is the same as that taken by all other participants in winter sports--that it is an injustice to abolish all forms of intercollegiate winter sport in order to save the schedules of fall and spring sports in their entirety. The proposed "reform" appears to their minds more punitive than corrective.

If the Faculty and athletic committee insist upon abolishing winter intercollegiate sports, no doubt for the first year an attempt will be made at intracollegiate sport; but such a form of competition has never been a distinct success, for the reason that such victories that might be gained are never satisfying to the healthy-minded undergraduate. The satisfaction of contact and occasional victory in honest rivalry make intercollegiate contests interesting, and as soon as the chief motive for competing is absent, the effect will be evident.

Swimming, for its vigorous exercise and purity, should be favored by the Faculty, because the contestants, as in tennis and rowing, are not subject to the temptation offered for dirty work. But the proposed plan of those in power is to cut out even this team, which, moreover, has only four contests a year, necessitating two absences only, from Cambridge. Surely the time taken away from studies to prepare for these contests, especially when practice is very light, because of the lack of a pool, can hardly be said to injure a swimmer's standing in the University. PAUL WITHINGTON.   ALLEN SWIFT.