NOT ENTIRELY GLOOMY.

There is a strong note of pessimism throughout the three short articles on present day school and college athletics in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The editor in introducing his contributors says: "It is not too much to say that, if the current standard of athletic honor were applied to other undergraduate interests, the training of American youth would border on demoralization." The headmaster of Phillips Andover Academy follows with a severe indictment of the methods of some of the school coaches and of the colleges where the example of these methods is set Finally comes Professor Stewart of Idaho who asserts that participation in college athletics teaches "trickery and deceit"; that a great number of professionals and ineligibles compete in college athletics; and that the win-at-all-cost spirit is too strongly impressed.

Some of these accusations may have excellent foundation, but one aspect which the critics have failed to consider is the improvement of athletics in the past decade. Yapping and rattling on the baseball field have become noticeably less in recent years, and have been agitated against in several large universities: the football games of the present are certainly mild compared with the tales we hear of the "old days" and good feeling, as a rule, prevails between members of rival teams. A comparison of conditions is useful in considering the athletic problem, and it throws a ray of sunshine on the dark prospect seen by the writers in the Atlantic.