Intercollegiate Contests.

The following is the opinion of Mr. Evert J. Wendell, '82, on intercollegiate contests, as expressed in the "N. Y. Commercial Advertiser:

"The action of the Harvard college overseers in recommending the prohibition of intercollegiate competitions has caused much excitement in college circles. E. J. Wendell, the well-known Harvard athlete has decided views on the question. Mr. Wendell was captain of the victorious Harvard team which won the Mott Haven cup in '80, '81 and '82. In '80 he won the intercollegiate championships at 100 yards, 220 yards and one-quarter mile, a feat never before or since accomplished by one man in one day. Mr. Wendell is still actively interested in Harvard athletic matters, and his opinion reflects to a large extent the graduate sentiment concerning the proposed change. He said:

"I shall be very much surprised and disappointed if the Harvard faculty see fit to pass the resolutions advised by the committee of the board of overseers. It would be contrary to the ideas and feelings of the undergraduates and, as far as my experience has gone, of the large body of graduates here as well. If left to themselves the tendency of the students is to correct many of the abuses which the overseers wish to put an end to. Only last year, they voted voluntarily to confine the baseball games to Yale and Princeton, so that the number of games played should be decreased. The tendency toward class and scrub boat races shows conclusively how little ground there is for the assertion that the University crew is the only one to which encouragement is given, and a glance at the football field in the fall, the gymnasium in winter, the baseball field in the spring, and the running track, the cricket crease, the lacross field and the tennis nets in both fall and spring would quickly convince any one that physical exercise at Harvard is by no means confined to a favored few. The estimate of $25,000 as the yearly cost of the various college contests must also in some way be misleading. Certainly track athletics more than pay for themselves. The receipts of the baseball nine from their various match games go far toward paying their season's expenses, and it is my impression that the football team and the lacrosse team are in much the same position. The crews, of course, have to be supported by the students; but one-fifth of the sum mentioned ought to be a handsome allowance for their support.

"Intercollegiate athletic contests bring out a man's college feeling more effectually than anything else can, and to abolish them in a college would be very perceptibly to diminish the interest of the students in that college as a whole by removing one of the most effective and legitimate means of arousing their loyalty to it. As I say, I shall be very much surprised and disappointed if the faculty see fit to pass the resolutions.

"If too much time is given to intercollegiate contests, I think no graduate will be found who would not favor reducing the number of games played; and if the expense is too great, all college athletes would favor any practical plan for decreasing it. But absolute prohibition of such contests does not seem the wisest way to bring about these ends."