AN INVALUABLE PRECEDENT.

In any discussion of the effect of athletics upon a college or university at large, the members of such an institution divide themselves into two distinct classes. The first is composed of athletes on the University teams; the second includes all other undergraduates. Athletics affect these two classes differently, and consequently they must be separately considered in questioning the advantage and disadvantage of competitive intercollegiate sport.

There are men of power and insight who condemn the University teams for their effect upon both these elements; for, they say, the strenuous physical work of athletes exhausts their vitality to a point where serious application to academic pursuits is impossible. They assert, moreover, that interest in the games draws the attention of every undergraduate away from his studies.

The claim that the simultaneous combination of the effective athlete and the high scholar in one man is impossible, has been emphatically disproved by the academic record of the 1910 football team. There was not a man on the squad whose marks were not well above the minimum requirement, and a few of the players almost reached the scholarship standard. The eleven whose season has just closed broke all records in academic standing held by a University athletic team.

Besides silencing one of the chief objections to intercollegiate athletics in general, the football squad established a precedent of the utmost value to future teams, and a mark which they can earnestly and proudly strive to equal or surpass.

If nothing of note had been accomplished on Soldiers Field this fall, Captain Withington's team would, nevertheless, be considered as having made Harvard athletic history. Every loyal graduate and undergraduate cannot help rejoicing, though not without misgiving, in the hope that from now on it shall be an established fact that no member of a University team is in difficulty with the College Office.