Harvard Unable to Find Rival For Cultural Contest This Year

After several unsuccessful attempts to procure an opponent for the Harvard scholars, the authorities have been forced to postpone for at least a year the second competition for the Putnam Prize, which was inaugurated last Spring in the cultural contest with Yale. The belated start made by the officials leaves no time for any further efforts to find at willing rival; and so the University will not be called upon to defend the laurels won for the first time last year.

An invitation was sent to Cambridge University, in England, to participate in the second competition this year, but the Britons declined for reasons not announced. A challenge then was sent to Yale for an examination on any number of subjects, but this likewise came to enough. Previously the University had tried to make arrangements with Princeton, but in this case the difference in the systems of curriculum prevented a fair match.

While the contest will not take place this year, it is understood definitely that there will be one in 1930, with some, institution to be named later.

The establishment of the competition last year called forth nation-wide comment which hailed it as the first intercollegiate scholastic meeting in the history of American education. It was created in memory of her husband by Mrs. William Lowell Putnam, who gave a trust fund of $125,000.

Yale opposed Harvard in the first class, on April 30, 1928, when ten men from each university took a three-hour examination in English literature. The results named by a board of distinguished professors, gave the victory to the students from Cambridge.