HELL IS PAVED--

Wynant D. Hubbard must be credited with an honest desire to get at the root of the Princeton-Harvard break by publishing his article in Liberty, accusing Princeton football teams of "dirty" tactics. He says, "I am writing this article with the sincere belief that it may help to clear the football air...that relations between Harvard and Princeton may eventually be resumed." It is highly unfortunate that such good intentions have been so unintelligently acted upon.

Hubbard cites ten specific cases of injury, but he does not and necessarily cannot prove that they were the result of "dirty" football. Already denials have appeared from men like Treat of Princeton whose opinion is as reliable as Hubbard's. 'There will undoubtedly be more such denials and counter-denials, and the good intentions of Harvard's former tackle will be submerged in a flood of angry publicity which will lead nowhere. "Dirty" football cannot be proved by individual opinion and accusation, by slow movies, or any other such method, because there is always another, and equally good side to the question. The only judge who is competent to accuse and condemn a player or a team for dirty football is the referee. He is there to prevent infringement of the rules. He is neither an excited partisan in the stands or an emotionally keyed up linesman or half-back in the heat of a hard game. His judgement, because it is obviously the best, must be taken as final. In none of the Princeton-Harvard games since the war has any member of either team received a major penalty. There have been one or two penalties for unnecessary roughness, some for holding and other minor infringements, all of which were quite evenly distributed, but there has been no action by any referee to indicate that Princeton-Harvard games are in any way distinct from other games on the Harvard schedule in cleanness of play. This silent record is conclusive. Against it, no matter how honest they are, flimsy lists of incidents like Hubbard's; based on circumstantial and partial evidence, cannot stand up. It is easy to refute them as it is to make them. The only purpose they serve is the creation of further animosities and heated argument.

Not only does Hubbard's article defeat its own avowed purpose, but the manner of its doing aggravates the public spectacle element in intercollegiate football and particularly in Princeton-Harvard football. If Hubbard had anything to say, and wanted to say it publicly, why did he not go to the Harvard Graduates Magazine or the Alumni Bulletin? If he wanted to clear the air between Harvard and Princeton, and settle once and for all the Princeton "dirty" football why did he not write for a Harvard-Princeton audience instead of going to a popular, sensational weekly whose circulation is largely among the readers of tabloid newspapers, among the rank and file of the subway strap-hangers, among those outside the collegiate circle, whose only possible interest in the Harvard-Princeton football break is the amount of dirt to be squeezed out of it. Already the athletic relations between the two universities have been made into a public scandal. They received the same treatment as the recent baseball crisis. They received the same attention from the street corner loafer, the same insane comments from people who never went to Harvard or Princeton, or any other college, whose interest in them, as it is in Charlie Chaplin, or Ban Johnson or Ty Cobb, is aroused by the unhealthy appetite for scandal and more scandal.

Football, like any other collegiate sport, is and should be if it is not, of, by, and for the undergraduate. President Lowell pointed this out very clearly in his report. It is a point worth making and repeating over and over again, for losing sight of it is responsible for the troubles which beset intercollegiate football today. Football has become too much the public's business, too little the undergraduate's interest. It is hardly too much to say that the recent break between Princeton and Harvard was treated in the press as a diplomatic break between the United States and Mexico would be treated. Hubbard has written to this public and so given them another dirty rag to chew.

His article and the repercussions which will inevitably succeed it will thus aggravate the very unhealthy public attention which the Harvard-Princeton break has already received, which intercollegiate football in general is every day receiving. Hubbard was entitled to express his opinion although it was in no way the general opinion of Harvard University. That he should have done so for the purpose of solving the Princeton-Harvard problem was unintelligent for he has defeated his own end. That he should have done so in the manner which he chose was very harmful to the best interests of the game which he has played and loves.