The effort to have the hearing before the Committee on Athletics postponed having proved fruitless, it is timely to put in a plea for the continuance of foot ball in the future. It seems to us that foot ball is too valuable a game to be discontinued and that, it the committee have so strong an objection to the game as their notice implies, they should make an attempt to better it before forbidding it entirely. That it is a valuable game is proved in many ways. Not long ago, the man most qualified to know, the director of the gymnasium, said he considered that it furnished the best exercise of any game. And what is the verdict of the youth of the country? Decidedly in its favor. The Rugby game was introduced lese than ten years ago, and for some years it was in a state of infancy while the larger colleges learned it. Now what do we find? No sooner is the game well known than it becomes immensely popular, and every college throughout the Eastern states and several in the West, have taken up the game. Each year its popularity increases, and not only new college, but even amateur teams of gentlemen, are now being formed. So if popularity is any test, the game must be one worth cultivating.

The committee ought to submit to the students their objections, stated specifically, and let them make an effort for change. The committee may claim that they did so last year with no beneficial results; but the method of their action then was so distasteful to the undergraduates that the attempt on their part at radical change was not genuine and so came to nothing. Then the idea of faculty interference in athletics was so novel and disagreeable, that the students simply bucked against it recklessly. Now the idea of interference, although no less disagreeable, perhaps, has lost all of its novelty, and we realize that, as the power to act undoubtedly lies with the faculty, we must show cause why they should not take any particular action, and try to bring them to our way of thinking. So, while the right of interference cannot be denied, we think that the committee ought to allow the students at least a fair chance to correct the evils, which they must point out, before they decide to make such a recommendation to the faculty as they propose to. Let them allow the foot ball men to attempt a change, before the game is forbidden.

There is no doubt that the committee have chosen a favorable time, for them, to make their move. The past season has seen us burdened with a poor eleven, and ending with a poorer record than ever before. But this makes it only the harder in the eyes of the world for us to give up the game gracefully. Many men, too, have temporarily lost their interest in the game on account of the poor work of the eleven, and will not make the protest against the prohibition that they ordinarily would. This is unfortunate and we advise every man to remember that such a low condition of affairs will not last, and that it is the duty of every man who takes even the slightest interest in foot ball, to redouble his efforts to prevent it from being trodden out at this unfortunate crisis.