AN OPEN PRACTICE

On Friday evening Harvard will see its first major football rally in six years. Whether or not such an affair will have the overwhelming support of the undergraduate body that is promised, and whether or not the spectators will attend from curiosity or enthusiasm remains to be seen. Whatever the result may be, however, the instigators will undoubtedly take their share of the credit should the team win the next day, and a precedent may automatically be established.

Although it is difficult to see how a staged rally such as this can have any serious results either in inspiring a football team which will be four miles away in Belmont at the time, or in permanently demoralizing the dominion of indifference, it is disappointing that Harvard should succumb under pressure to the revival of a custom it had wisely disposed of. The attitude of undergraduates ion the last few years towards football cannot scathingly be termed indifferent; it has simply been a sane attitude which marked Harvard as being years ahead of other colleges in this respect.

There are, however, a considerable number of men in the College whose interest in football transcends a noisy display of doubtful enthusiasm on the steps of Widener. To these men who would prefer to give evidence of their support in a less violent form, the Stadium could be thrown open Friday afternoon during the final practice. In the presence even of a silent group of on-lookers the team should find encouragement, and at the same time the necessity for a specially prepared stimulant in the form of a rally would be obviated.