The Advertiser in an editorial, which reads quite as if it had been written by a member of the athletic committee of the Harvard faculty, attempts a defence of the present crusade against "professionalism." The term "professional," the writer admits, has had a vague and unsatisfactory definition in this discussion. Starting out therefore with an easy dismissal of the commonly accepted definition of the term, he proceeds to lay down what he considers its proper meaning. We do not see what good reason what we may call the crusade party in this discussion have for clinging with such desperate fondness to a mere watchword such as this. Word-jugglery is often effective on party contests, but we cannot but think it harmful here. That is to say, we believe that those who support the new crusade often fail to grasp the real evils which have called forth this reform movement, because of a certain mental obstinacy on their part in only considering one aspect of the evil. It is true that it does no particular harm to attach to the term "professionalism" the peculiar connotation which is given to it by the Advertiser writer. We do not believe, however, that under a categorical examination he would still hold that his description of the evil covers all cases and is a satisfactory basis of argument. Professionalism is too formless a dragon to attack with any hope of victory. Excess and occasional brutality in college sports are specific charges offering chance for specific reform.

But perhaps the Advertiser writer and his co-reformers are not much concerned about such evils. Their sole effort, it may be, is to lead back college sport by the stern hand of authority to the pure forms of earlier days-to the condition where, as the Advertiser puts, the participant or onlooker at the game can recall the "delights of the recesses of his school days."

Let us estimate competition, we can hear this party say; abolish all regular training and organized efforts to play a "scientific" game; return to the rules and customs of the simple sports of early boyhood. It is on this point only that debate is to come, then we have an issue clearly defined, and we do not hesitate to attack such a position as the above as plainly untenable. We have not many hopes of convincing those members of the faculty who hold to such a belief after having soberly considered the arguments on both sides already brought forward, so utterly alien must be their point of view to that of the students. We on the one hand regard athletic sports as a regular system, developed after a show growth, in many ways faulty and capable of improvement, but certainly not to be remedied by a return to the idyllic and primeval ideal set forth by the crusaders. As a system, those sports have many objects, that of school day-recess amusement, not by any means being the only one. The opportunity for and impetus to systematic physical training we regard not as the least of these. Indeed it would not be wrong to consider this their foremost object, if sometimes an object not fully avowed. This element in athletics the Advertiser entirely leaves out of account. "But the growth of the professional spirit has gone," it says, "so far that the idea of playing any game except for the purpose of beating, seems to an undergraduate simply absurd." This statement is both true and not true. It is true that the undergraduate enters into a game generally with the thought prominent in his mind of beating. It is not true that in his whole system of athletics-in his preparation for this game or in his attendance at it, this is his sole object. We think there is hardly a man concerned in athletics at Harvard whose moving impulse in entering into a sport is not far more the idea of sound bodily training, regular exercise and pleasant recreation far more than any exclusive and feverish desire to win games. This every such man we believe individually feels. College teams often seem to direct their energies in another way. But so long as the benefit of the individual is secured it does not much matter (comparatively) as to the rest. It is true many men do not engage in athletic sports. This however is not to be mended by reducing such sports to a more simple state of development. The calculus is not to be studied until after a considerable training in more elementary branches of mathematics. A man cannot expect to play upon a university team until he has acquired a like preliminary skill in less exacting exercises. The remedy lies in a more general extension of sports in college by organizing many more preparatory teams in a better state of physical education in all schools which fit boys for college.