THIS NEW FREEDOM

Made public almost simultaneously with President Lowell's criticism of big-business athletics, news that the annual Yale-Harvard baseball series is to be played this year with coaches absent from the bench is likely to attract considerable interest.

While the announcement will be most welcome to those who have been demanding the return of the game to the players, no one as yet can consider if more than an experiment whose outcome is, at best, somewhat doubtful. Relations between coach and player have always been close in baseball, and it is not undue pessimism to wonder what effect a break in this tie will have upon the game.

It is well to note, however, that this move to do away with coaches on the baseball bench is of no such radical nature as might be supposed. Tried before in the 1914 series between Harvard and Yale it succeeded in producing three games of good ball. Also of favorable omen is the success of last year to the extent that Princeton now proposes its extension to other major opponents.

Intercollegiate baseball has never been greatly burdened with over emphasis in any of its forms, it is true. But if leading Eastern universities are willing to give the players an opportunity to play the game on their own there is certainly tangible indication of a new spirit in college sporting circles.