FENCING.

The announcement that the scrub fencing tournament has been abandoned because of an insufficient number of entries is another instance of the lack of interest taken in fencing at Harvard. Compared with this sport, basketball is a flourishing institution. Very few men go out for the University team, and at the class tournament last month one member of the Freshman team was absent and the Juniors were not represented at all. No wonder the University team failed to qualify for the intercollegiate tournament in the last two years. When there is so little general interest taken that the majority of the undergraduates do not know the names of the members of the team, failure is generally the thing to be expected.

We cannot find fault with fencing as a sport as we can with basketball, because it has been shown to be one of the best forms of indoor exercise, and is recommended by many experts for the general development of the body. But apparently the attractions of the game do not excite the ambitions of many Harvard undergraduates, and the uniform unsuccess of the team has not tended to increase its popularity. As long as the feeling exists that the number of intercollegiate athletic contests should be reduced, and even if there were no such feeling, it would be well to consider the abolition of intercollegiate matches in branches of sport which are unsuccessful and not popular.