EATING THE PUDDING

The CRIMSON's prediction of yesterday morning that the rally immediately before the departure of the crew for the Red Top training quarters would be just what it should be, only "a voicing of support and approval both necessary and encouraging to a Harvard crew in a difficult situation" seems to have been justified and more. There was nothing of the synthetic, formal nature present that makes the type of mob psychology usually prevalent in such affairs a doubtful manner of approaching athletic contests whether of great or small importance in the eyes of professional sport followers. Given an opportunity through the advertising potentialities of a rather informally constructed band the College saw fit to encourage certain undergraduates who, representing the University in a dramatic fashion for the next few weeks, find themselves peculiarly handicapped. The overheated hysterical character of a mass meeting that produces hoarseness and an unhealthy tension had no place among the undergraduates who marched to Newell Boat House yesterday.

That the college is capable of doing such a thing in such a spirit, that, in a crisis in a spectacular major sport, it can avoid the hysteria that is proverbially expressed in the phrase of the over-excited substitute: "Why, sir, I'd die for dear old Rutgers" is a sign that the attitude of the University in regard to athletics is well advanced in a metamorphosis that no one can regret. It is not that undergraduates are being drawn out of an interest in athletics: It is rather that their interest is being transferred from a false dependence on a single phase of education.