We publish to-day a communication from the executive committee of the Harvard Union. The charges recently made by the Advocate that the Union was degenerating and that meaningless speeches met with applause, and that ranting was considered brilliant, are reviewed at length. We hope that all the friends of the Union will read all the articles upon the subject which have been published, and thoughtfully make an unbiased judgment, for if the charges made by the Advocate and our correspondent are true, the training which the speakers in the Union are getting must be very harmful to their powers of expression, to their modes of thought, and to their conceptions of what argument should be. Therefore, a warning should be made in time. We feel obliged to dissent from the statement of the committee: and from our own experience at the debates, we must frankly admit that there is a lamentable carelessness in the manner in which many speeches are delivered. Likewise, the substance of many speeches is either totally irrelevant to the subject, or else the old attempts at witticisms which were considered hackneyed in the college days of our grandfathers are resuscitated, and in their grave clothes are trotted out to the rostrum in Sever 11. If, however, we are wrong in our conception of the situation, we would like to ask the management of the Union why it is that Law School men and many members of the upper classes who once were prominent in the Union, have ceased to take part in the debates.

The game played by our cricket team at Longwood on Saturday, although a severe defeat for Harvard, ought nevertheless to be regarded as a good opportunity for our team to find out how it stands when measured against other teams of the country. It has taken advantage of this opportunity to show itself equal to anything that is expected of it at so early a season. The game of Saturday brought out admirable playing on both sides, and displayed qualities in our men that augur well for the success of the team in the approaching cricket season. We can only say that our men are capable of doing themselves credit this summer; whether they will do so, depends on themselves, and we think, from some of the really admirable playing done in this game, that we can safely rely upon them.