THE CAT COMES BACK

On Armistice Day six years ago the officials of Princeton University set off a firecracker under the athletic world by severing connections with Harvard because of an unfortunate Lampoon editorial. The break was, however, due to more than a broadside in the college comic; it was caused by a crisis in relations that had been badly frayed by lack of tact, sportsmanship, and sanity. The editorials reprinted below are all too reliable witnesses to that; there is a malevolence betrayed in them which one feels, cannot return. The day of football rallies, of graduate agitation for a larger and finer stadium, of point-a-minute teams, has passed. The false pride and exaggerated loyalty of those who scorched the wires between Cambridge and Princeton is not likely to return. Sport now takes a position in the college microcosm relatively much less important than that it occupied six years ago, and it is unthinkable that feeling should today run high enough to prevent the friendly meeting of traditional rivals. It has been this change of feeling, evinced by undergraduates and for several years expressed in the editorial columns of the Daily Princetonian and the CRIMSON, which has made possible the reconciliation completed by the resumption of football relations announced today.

Yet it would be unjustified to predict that the healing of the wound will not leave deep and ineffaceable scars. In the six years since the last game with Princeton, Harvard has traveled a long road, leading it ever farther from the ways of the black and gold. Despite the cheery words of athletic directors about "natural rivals" and "the Big Three," apathy and the indisputable fact of the House plan, with all that it implies, may imperil the hoped-for importance of the game.

Yale's agreement with Princeton expires next fall, and in 1934, the year of the resumption of the Harvard-Princeton contest, the Tiger will play the final game, not with Yale as usual, but with Dartmouth. The sanguine will hope for the evolution of a "Big Four." Dartmouth. Harvard, Princeton, and Yale; such an evolution might possibly be the natural outcome of the new arrangements.

The process of forgiving and forgetting has been long and never graceful; even the generous may be led to suspect that its belated culmination was hastened by the prospect of a remunerative spectacle so much needed for unhealthy budgets. The puerilities have been left in the past, and there is cause for rejoicing. The good offices of Yale and the Naval Academy in bringing about the reconciliation should not be forgotten. Beyond that, oblivion for the incident of 1926 is the most Harvard and Princeton can desire.