THE SCOUTS TAKE COVER

Gracefully if somewhat reluctantly Harvard concedes the first moral victory of the football year to the directors of New Haven athletic destinies. The H. A. A. has stated clearly that it does not care to remain longer either different or indifferent in regard to non-scouting agreements, and that next year its officials will restrain any curiosity pertaining to Yale teams until the final game in the Stadium. Next year organized and open scouting of Eli teams will be abandoned, with the words "next year" specific in the agreement. Remembering the tardy, appearance of her football teams among the ranks of numbered players, Harvard is willing to fall in line for one experimental year.

The benefits attendant upon the abolition of the present system of scouting appear certainly to outweigh the arguments raised by the Athletic Association in its favor. Scouting is an undoubted expanse and has by its very nature become highly competitive. Even from a strictly technical football point of view it it questionable as to how much a knowledge of the other team's plays improves the calibre of the play. The other objections are negative in quality in that they raise a question as to the power of either college to live up fully to the spirit of the agreement. As in the case of the Hopkins proposals, opponents of the plan objected to the two team suggestion on the grounds that every college would make it a point to keep its beat team at home, this argument does not seem valid. We must admit practical objections but we can not include under this head the failure of a college to fulfill in a gentlemanly fashion its share of a mutual agreement. Harvard should expect her graduates as should also Yale to follow their respective athletic heads in a guiding policy of "mutual trust."

It is none the less to the credit of the Harvard Director of Athletics that he enters the agreement with suggestions for the remedy of what he considers to be flaws in the plan. The proposal that the rival coaches exchange a list of formations used in the preliminary games is the most sensible suggestion possible, and seems in itself a complete solution of the question. In his letter to Professor Nettleton, Mr. Bingham also vouches for the support of the Harvard Committee in the event that Coaches Horween and Jones might agree to extend reciprocal invitations to games in Cambridge and New Haven. With the aid of such suggestions as these the non-scouting agreement should be the success that will insure a continuance of Harvard's participation in a definite forward athletic move.