Cheerio

To the, Editor of the CRIMSON

In Monday's CRIMSON there was published a letter, signed Delcevare King 95, in which the writer deplores the singing of Yale songs when we are playing colleges other than Yale. He regrets the fact that "we have over and over again the some heavy un-Collegey cheer. Other colleges certainly show far more the spirit of jolly college students... We may not be able to win..." he concludes (after announcing that we are reputed to be "too dignified to have a peppy cheer"), "but certainly in our Band music, our singing, and our cheering, we ought to win a larger measure of approbation from those attending the games." Mr. King's criticisms are apparently made in all seriousness.

Assuming that his point is well taken, let us look to the remedy. Since we play Yale every year, the existing "best Yale" songs will perhaps do for the third week in November. As for the other seven games, there are surely enough poets and musicians among students and alumni to compose seven new songs for next year, after the Football Manager has announced the schedule.

After this initial outlay, the usual changes in the schedule from year to year will require the addition of only three or four songs per annum, which the student body can readily learn to sings with all the versatility which Mr. King now finds missing.

And by all means let us do away with the simplicity of the present cheer--which is so simple that spontaneity is said to creep into it at times--a rare presence in any organized cheer. Let us instead drill a chorus of bright-clothed acrobats to thrill visitors to Cambridge with antic contortions on the side lines. For the present cheer, with the pounding weight of lung-power behind it, with its full energy directed to the field and to the game there being played,--let us substitute an ingenious concoction of shrieks, whistles, walls, and hoarse laughter, the latter evincing that we are, beyond a doubt, jolly college boys and full of zest and snap on all occasions, whether our team is good or bad.

It will also entertain chance visitors to Cambridge and serve to take their minds off the game. Then, if we lose, it will not matter so much; and the bystanders will go home feeling that the game was merely a side-show in the circus, and that the circus itself (Harvard) was rather a jolly and zestful and snappy and "College" place after all. Warwick Potter Scott '23.