RESULT OF CURTAILMENT.

After a thorough investigation the CRIMSON has found that the position of the Faculty is based upon no specific injuries to scholarship by intercollegiate athletics, but upon the general feeling ("vague generalities" being objected to) that the undergraduate mind is too pre-occupied, too prone to dwell upon punts, hurdles, and three-base hits, instead of upon problems of social ethics.

The Faculty has made very clear to us this year its proposed remedy for the situation; its desire to improve the scholarship whose pre-eminence is shared by no other institution. We were, therefore, well prepared for President Eliot's suggestion, made in the report published this morning, to allow but two intercollegiate contests in any one branch of sport.

No one is more anxious than the CRIMSON to see Harvard students intellectual, forceful, clear-thinking men. The Faculty desires this very thing, but is neglecting the inevitable tendencies of human nature. A man either has intellectual tastes or he has not. No amount of legislation will increase the desire for theoretical learning in the unintellectual man; no amount of athletic contest by his classmates will decrease this desire in the truly intellectual man. "You can drive a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."

College men are very much interested in intercollegiate athletics, which give them an outlet for superfluous energy, that in no event would be expended on studies. Without them the undergraduates would take part in intercollegiate athletics to a certain extent; possibly somewhat more than at present. But this form of amusement could never occupy the spare time of all the students as intercollegiate athletics now do. Instead of watching games in the open air many undergraduates would fritter away their time in card-playing, theatre-going, and in vicious forms of dissipation.

The CRIMSON is ready to admit that for a brief period there is a good deal of athletic preoccupation. For a large part of the year, however, we believe it is almost negligible, except on the part of the actual participants. These men are bound to keep up in their work, and against them the Faculty has nothing to complain.

Do away with intercollegiate athletics, or curtail them so that it is no longer possible to meet our dearest rivals, and forward passes, sacrifice hits, and strikeouts would no longer be talked about. But would questions of political economy or philosophy be more prominent? We are convinced that they would not.