PERCY D. HAUGHTON

Last Saturday Harvard football fans turned eager glances toward the scoreboard to watch Columbia's rising victory over Williams. Behind so special an interest in Columbia's fate was the knowledge that in that new field the "Harvard system" was being weighed and not found wanting. And now comes word that the originator of that system is dead.

From 1908 to 1916, as coach of Harvard football, Percy D. Haughton created the system which made him one of the leading figures in the history of the game. His coaching did much to convert football from a contest of brawn to one of skill and brains. Quick thinking was the essence of it. From the first day of practice he grilled his men upon fundamentals. Rules were established covering every variety of situation, so that every player was instructed exactly what he should and should not do in each specific case.

The results of such methodical precision startled even the oldest adepts in the game. What to do under given conditions was no longer a simple matter of individual ingenuity. Football had been put through the laboratory and reduced to a science. The contagion of Coach Haughton's magnetic personality, moreover, inspired in his teams a pluckiness and "fight" which made them undaunted in defeat as well as in victory. So successful was his system, that when he resigned, Coach Fisher, who had himself been drilled in the Haughton school, chose to continue it.

Percy D. Haughton was an American sportsman. He played not for sport's sake, though none got greater enjoyment from sport than he. He played to win: and it was fitting that he should end his career upon so signal a victory as that of Saturday.