The recent conference on athletics we are glad to be able to say, is likely to result in furnishing many undergraduates whose minds were previously more or less in the dark in regard to the present attitude of the college authorities on the subject, with a more or less definite idea of the views held by some of the more influential members of the faculty, and presumably therefore by the faculty in general. We also hope that the knowledge by the faculty of the views of a large proportion of the students on the matter of professionalism as expressed at the conference by the president of the athletic association and others may be of use in bringing about a better mutual understanding on both sides. In our issue of the morning preceding the recent conference we took occasion to criticise some portions of President Eliot's annual report treating of college athletics as vague and non-committal, and indeed those passages taken by themselves still seem to us non-committal and vague. The result of this conference however may be taken to establish a definite idea of what the faculty's peculiar definition of "professional" is in the first place, and how clean sweeping is its prohibition of "professionalism" in the second place. President Eliot's report contains a sweeping condemnation of the practice of employing all trainers whatever; "They are in favor of forbidding college clubs and crews to employ trainers," (p23): and yet from expressions let fall at this conference we should not judge that the faculty's prohibition was by any means so absolute as one would naturally imply from this statement. Indeed we do not understand that the college holds any objection to the employment of a trainer for the crews such as Col. Bancroft, nor wouldn't oppose the employment as permanent trainer of the other teams of any satisfactory and competent man, even if a professional who had abandoned his "profession" as a means of livelihood, and in future should exclusively devote himself to teaching out-door athletics under the employment and supervision of the college.

The faculty's inhibition then seems to lie only against all present, active connection with any form of "professionalism" and the so called "sporting world"-an objection which we still hold to be somewhat vague and ill-defined in spite of the arguments to the contrary expressed at this conference. We cannot believe that the alternative is so rigid as Pres. Eliot has urged. Whatever excess and whatever tendendency to professionalism there has been of late years can be corrected without such sweeping changes as the faculty proposes. A middle course is possible to this extent, that we can retrace our steps and place college athletics once again in the position which they held ten or fifteen years ago when hardly a hint of professional taint or of undue excess was ever made. Indeed the gap between the two methods of reform is not so very wide. Not-withstanding these consideration however, we believe the college stands ready to accept the experiment of the faculty and test its new system with good grace and even with willing cooperation, provided that it be reasonably forewarned and be treated with justness and fairness so that its position may not become forced and unnatural, through inconsistent regulations, and ambiguous proceedings on the part of the faculty.