BETTER BALANCE

The CRIMSON has made it, so far as possible, its custom never to indulge in personalities. With but few exceptions, the private affairs of members of the University have, when known, been kept inviolate. But the resignation of the managership of the University football team by Winslow Carlton '29, with the purpose of devoting more time to his studies, is too significant of a new order to pass without mention.

Reduced to its barest terms, Carlton's resignation means that an A in History and Literature is more to be desired, at least by some people at Harvard, than the time-hallowed major sport "II". There have been others, no doubt, who thought the same, but they have either not been favored with the opportunity so clearly to indicate their choice or they have-found the pressure of public opinion and tradition too strong to overcome.

The fact that in this particular case, a managership is giving way before scholarship is not of great moment. Other extra curricula activities, different from the football managership only in that they are less in the public eye, have, no doubt, suffered the same fate in recent years. The teams, too, have not been immune from the added attraction which the tutorial system, better reading facilities, more capable instructors, or whatnot seem to be lending to what was formerly considered the exclusive preserve of the uncongenial grind.

About the hardest question that can be put to an undergraduate concerns the purpose of his presence for four years at an institution of higher learning. Some general agreement can be secured on the thesis that a full college life consists of several different phases, many of them highly to be desired. Formerly, extra curricula activities were the phase which not only predominated, but actually excluded scholarship. The tendency of late has been in the opposite direction, as the decreased interest in each and every form of activity shows.

This tendency, the CRIMSON believes, is to be commended, together with the change in student and official athletic attitude which permits a student to make his own way, free from any stigma of disloyalty to his obligations or that most heinous of Early Twentieth Century charges, lack of College Spirit.