NOT THE ONLY PEBBLE

With the glamor of a "big game" absent from Cambridge this week-end there is an opportunity to realize that intercollegiate football has no monopoly on the athletic interest of Harvard men during the fall months which the public dedicates to the roaring stadium. When Saturday after Saturday thousands of spectators envelop the chosen game in a sheen of frantic glory, the numerous minor sports go quietly on their own ways asking no share of the ballyhoo which rings from all sides in their ears.

If intercollegiate football contests owe a good part of their present position to the notice which the press and radio have brought them, there is no doubt that the singularly different development of minor sports has been possible only through the salutary neglect which has left them to struggle along on their own feet.

There is little to be gained now by calling attention to the many contests which regularly take place almost without the knowledge of anyone save the players themselves. Except, that there is a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that, despite cries of commercialism and over-emphasis of athletics, there are a large number of men who find pleasure in organized athletics just for the sake of the game itself.

This week-end there is occasion for those undergraduates who find themselves left in Cambridge to do a little exploring on playing fields whose informal air of good sportsmanship is certain to prove an attraction. Harvard's athletic policy has long been established on the principle of the greatest possible number of participants. The men who have discovered the benefits received in such humble places as the lacrosse field, the rifle range, and the soccer field have gone a long way towards answering the charge that Saturday football spectacles are the sine qua non of college life.