HOCKEY A MAJOR SPORT.

We print on another page a communication from the president of the Varsity Club starting a movement to make hockey a major sport. Mr. Thayer has the backing of a great many graduates and he feels sure that the sentiment among them is strongly in favor of adding the Canadian game to the present list of four major sports. The only remaining, and at the same time the most important, point is to inquire the opinion of undergraduates. For this purpose there will be a meeting of the entire Student Council tomorrow evening, to vote on the matter.

As must have been evident to our readers during the past winter the CRIMSON has taken a strong position in favor of hockey. We think that it is a game which fills, as no other sport can, the interval between football and the spring athletic activities.

This fact, coupled with the great interest shown in hockey at Harvard, especially since the building of the Boston Arena, has provided what seem to us the essentials of a major sport; namely, a well-established and definite season, and a substantial backing, financial and otherwise. Both of these hockey has, in some ways more completely than one or two of the major sports.

An incidental matter is the remarkable success which has followed hockey teams at Harvard ever since they took the place of ice-polo in 1897. Five championships, one tie for first place and never finishing lower than second in the intercollegiate league, is a record we think unapproached by any other sport at Harvard. Under the present system of coaching, unusually strong ever since hockey has been played here, we believe that our teams are more or less independent of the facilities of the Arena, and that they will continue as heretofore: entirely representative of Harvard.

It seems to us that there is every reason for the recognition of the sport as Mr. Thayer proposes. We hope that the Student Council will uphold the apparently strong feeling of the graduates, and that in this way hockey, one of our prettiest and most popular sports will be put on a basis where it can reach its highest efficiency.