MARTIAL MUSIC

News that the big bass drum of Purdue will not boom in the Stadium this afternoon brings disappointment to the potential spectators, but relief to the Harvard Band. For according to rumor, the musicians who so unfortunately stayed at home not only possess the most gigantic drum in the history of Lafayette, Indiana, but are a group of men whose manoeuvres on the gridiron are equalled only by the warriors once in moleskin and silk. There was a time, just after the war, when the Harvard Band had a monopoly on football music, or at least on intermission parades; but those happy days are gone with the rest of the happy Harvard football days, and the marching monopoly exists no longer. Last week, to sure, the Band was all alone and performed creditably, starting off well and wisely by doffing their traditional red sweaters and at least appearing cool. Today their marching and playing was to have been put to a more vital test, but competition must wait till next week, after all. Purdue depends upon its gridiron heroes to defend its glory in Cambridge, and its musicians are left behind.

Even if the Hoosier Band had arrived to match its skill with the best Harvard can offer, there would have been no consternation in the stands. For Harvard has confidence in its musicians--only too often, indeed, it has had to depend on them to defend its glory on the gridiron. Those exercisers of lung and finger carry the Crimson standard high as they parade through the goalposts--before the game--and again when they return courtesy for courtesy between the halves. Only one really pernicious habit has cropped out in the Harvard Band. It made its first appearance in the Princeton game last year, when, after the Harvard supporters had listened patiently to songs for old Nassau, my boys, and were aching for a chance to show their contempt for the whole proceedings by singing of the things they were going to do to old Eli the Band, obligingly struck up "Moonlight and Roses." Its mournful notes may have been vaguely appropriate, but they did not seem so at the time. For the dulcet tones of popular melodies serve only to annoy the Stadium's frenzied occupants, whose demand will ever be for the trumpet's martial blare, and the cymbals' clash punctuating the tune of a familiar football song.