AN ANCIENT GAME REVIVIFIED

It is with delight that we hear of the plan to play chess by wireless. Surely of all the triumphs of Marconi's genius none surpasses this. It has long been recognized by non-partisan observers that the range of the University Chess Team is much curtailed, and many possible glorious victories have been lost because of the team's inability to entertain the Swedish mathematical wizards in a dual contest, or to journey to Pekin to brave the Confucius Club upon its home chess board.

As a result of this limited range of contest, it may be affirmed without doubt that interest in the success of the chess team has been subordinated to a less intellectual interest in the successful issue of the annual football game with Yale. In many ways this attitude is unfortunate. Chess was in vogue among the polite countiers of Kubla Khan when the game of football was played with a rough stone, kicked about the wild British moors by half-naked tribesmen. And chess will remain a noble game when the last goal post has rotted and the last pigskin has burst. To make chess less than football is to make the immortal dependent on the strictly finite. Chess is the mother of all games.

Now the bright hope is offered that chess may again obtain the high place its history demands, and the amusement and relaxation of Khufu, of Solomon and of Archimedes, regain its ancient luster. The sightless couriers of the air have been harnessed to bring unseen thought from the far corners of the earth. The very winds will rattle to the messages of opposing plays, even as they now rattle to the cabalistic numerals of the quarterbacks on any Saturday afternoon. What incentive will be given to the young Edisons, with their apparatus of chicken wire and a clothes pole, to catch from out the flying night the latest returns from the great Sitka-South Africa championship contest, or to learn that Quito has captured the title of the world!

Within the silent sanctity of the Union the Harvard team will sit, doughty warriors of many a bygone contest, pondering deep in thought, while the cheering thousands hang breathless on their move. The decision will be made amid tumultuous joy, the eager operators will flash the word to No Man's Land; while on roofs, in trees, on catboats, in the highest mountain tops and to the far corners of the cornerless earth, uncounted receivers will take up the word, and follow the victorious play.

Where will be your glory then, O Football? When the swift lightnings bear the joyous news, "Harvard has moved a bishop into Bombay's king row and captured India's queen!"