MR. WHITNEY ON ATHLETICS

In what purports to be "a deliberate critical review of Harvard's (athletic) course for twenty years," Mr. Caspar Whitney has sought to explain and comment on the upheaval in our athletics during the past year in the May "Outing," which has just appeared. Had Mr. Whitney taken the trouble to ascertain the facts of the situation more carefully, his opinions as an impartial observer would carry more weight with those of us, at least, who are more or less familiar with conditions. When he says that soon after the Yale football game last fall, the Governing Boards appointed an investigating committee, the inference is, that had the game resulted differently, no investigation would have occurred. When we recall that the investigating committee was appointed some seven months before the Yale game, Mr. Whitney's insinuation seems anything but justified.

Overlooking several similar inaccuracies which, however, detract materially from the value of the article, we do feel that many of the general conclusions at which Mr. Whitney arrives are true, and hurt the more because they are aimed at tender spots. "There is always slandering of one sport or another, always some official or specially appointed committee of this, or that, or the other branch of athletics. There is always some unpleasant reflection on sport in the morning papers with the Cambridge date line." And how true those statements are. In the past we graduates and undergraduates, athletes and non-athletes--have not pulled together in athletics. We have too often used petty disagreements for wedges to force apart our common interests. Mr. Whitney attributes this lack of unity to the "adoration of the unbridled ego." Perhaps he is right, but we think it is rather the result of generations of individual thought and action which have made Harvard stand for what it does today. For the newspaper notoriety which our disagreements invariably gain, we are not to blame except as they originate from Harvard men, and renewed expressions of contempt in these cases are hardly necessary.

But these criticisms have been of the past. Mr. Whitney has not seen the democratic spirit which has passed over the College during the last few years, a spirit which is spread among the graduates more widely with each graduating class. Our past is full of hard-earned lessons, but never has the athletic situation been more satisfactory than it is today.