While we are in hearty sympathy with the college authorities in their efforts to keep the taint of professionalism from our college athletics, we cannot forbear again calling attention to the ridiculous extreme to which their fear of this professionalism has carried them. It is a well known fact that our base-ball nine made a failure of its last season, although it started out with the brightest prospects, simply from the lack of professional training. Although other colleges had the advantage of a professional player in training their pitchers and their batsmen, we were compelled to play through the season without having had the least preliminary training. The result was shown by the scores. Although our nine led the colleges in her fielding average and five Harvard men led in their respective positions in the field, we were at the foot of the list in batting. The experience of the past in both professional and amateur baseball circles has shown that good fielding with poor batting will avail nothing against strong batting. It is ability to bat that wins the games and for Harvarn to make any sort of show in the future she must have a pitcher who can keep down an opponent's batting, and men who can bat for us. Our men will never learn to bat while they have no good pitching to bat against. The base-ball association should be allowed to engage a professional pitcher as trainer at once, when other colleges are doing so, and should not be obliged to go through another season similar to the last. If the nine is to be handicapped another year in this manner, it were better that Harvard withdrew from the college league.

As long as we have professional trainers in sparring, fencing and general athletics, we cannot see why we should not have professional trainers in base-ball playing. Playing with professionals is certainly not so injurious as playing with some of the teams we practiced with last year, although we confess that the general recruiting of the professional ranks from among college players that has taken place during the past few seasons is a severe blow to college athletics. The faculty committee of conference meets in a short time and we hope the subject of a professional trainer will be taken up.