EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON: Your correspondent of Saturday has stated so admirably what has long seemed to me the cardinal defects in our system of athletics that I cannot but say a word in his support. I think it may safely be said that we train the few at the expense of the many; and thus in athletics as everywhere else produce a little group of specialists. Now this might be an excellent policy were our specialists always to remain with us. But their stay is always limited. As a rule they play but three years at most. When they are gone, one newspaper after another takes up the cry - "The Harvard team is greatly weakened by the loss of A": "Without X Harvard has no chance at the championship": and so on ad nauseum. And often too, there is some truth in these statements. For, relying on the powers of a few men, we have made no attempt to bring out the skill which may exist in other quarters. Hence, we have substantially to start afresh whenever a team loses several of its strongest men.

Grant that there must be a natural aptitude before training begins its work; but with this aptitude training can do almost anything. Thus if the largest possible number of men were kept in training in one way or another, gaps would be easily supplied with men at any rate seasoned by long practice, if they had no other valuable qualities. The higher the training of the college at large, the less dependent we shall be on what we may call the stars of the athletic worlds and the better able to produce teams, if not of conspicuous, at any rate of even merit, from year to year. The great strength of the athletic organizations of Eton and Rugby and Harrow lies in the fact that every man in the schools is in more or less severe training.

Again it can hardly be denied that we look rather lightly on the efforts of the members of our teas as soon as the excitement of their victories is over. Knowing little of the long and severe taining at the expense of which they have won success, we easily forget or underrate it. If more men had trained, even but little, a nine victorious for the first time in many years, would not need to wait six months for a struggling attempt to give it cups. By all means, then, let your correspondent's suggestions receive the encouragement they deserve. Not, I mean, by the college authorities only, but by our own selves. We must even bear in mind that by so much as our own power is increased in any direction, so far is the power of the whole university in that direction made greater. * *