What They Deserve

"During the next few days the thoughts of most of us will centre on little besides football. It may be objected that athletics play too prominent a part in college life, but the fact remains that their position is such throughout the country that if we engage in intercollegiate contests at all the enthusiasm and importance attached to these contests is necessarily very great. Harvard men, both graduates and undergraduates, feel an all absorbing interest in their team which finds an expression at this season on every occasion that any number of us come together.

"In the Union tonight will be held the last mass-meeting before the game. Even the great Living Room will be too small to hold all those who come to show the team their loyalty and interest. Such occasions, when entirely spontaneous, are not merely demonstrations over one team: they express in a wider sense the devotion of us all to the University." --lead editorial, The Harvard CRIMSON, November 18, 1903.

Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, President of the CRIMSON and later of the United States, wrote that editorial. And the colorful New Dealer was never more correct than when he suggested that Harvard men should give their team the kind of support it deserves. They may do so once again tonight, not in the great Living Room, but in the plot of land surrounded by Kirkland, Winthrop and the Indoor Athletic Building.