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Now that the baseball season here is approaching the climax of the Yale game, we should like to enquire with what aim the undergraduates have attended the contests of the past few weeks. If it has been merely to see two nines play ball, well and good, or rather well and bad, they might have satisfied their desire just as completely on the South End Grounds. If with any intention of rendering their team encouragement and support, their failure has been little less than ludicrous. A stranger in Cambridge attending one of the minor games, would have received the impression that he had been cast into a crowd of sporting critics rather than an assemblage of college men out to see their representative team.

In the face of such critical indifference it is hard for men to play consistently good ball. Imagine yourself trying to do your best day after day, with no show of confidence from your friends on the side lines, Before long you would feel with a good many members of the Harvard nine, that you could play better ball away from home. We do not ask for a continuous howl from the bleachers, far from it. We should merely like to see the fellows shake off, at least while on Soldiers Field, the effects of the "Austere academic influence" we hear so much about, give the nine a good rousing cheer when they play well, no matter who their opponents, and when they are discouraged or demoralized, help them out with a bit of enthusiasm.

In thinking over the Princeton game of a few weeks ago the casual observer might say, "surely there was cheering enough." True, but that cheering did not come at the right time. When the chances of the Harvard nine seemed to improve through the errors of the visiting team, the applause was of the loudest, but when the home nine were demoralized there was not the slightest effort to help them. We should be sorry to see a repetition of this on Thursday.