The college year which begins today marks another step in the downward path which seems to be the one destined for Harvard in athletic sports. The report of our defeats of last June, which are published today according to custom, open the wounds which were partly healed during the summer recess, and must awaken in the hearts of everyone who claims to possess any love for Harvard, serious thoughts as to the reason for our continued discomfiture. It is true, indeed, that athletics are not the main purpose of college life, but nevertheless, "Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well," and therefore, it shows a lamentable lack of determination and perseverance when the largest university of the country, with greater conveniences for athletic practice, succumbs as a matter of course to colleges which have neither its size nor its advantages. Defeat is always a disgrace, and in calling the position of Harvard in athletics disgraceful, one is not using a word that is a whit too strong. Can the blame be located? The captains of the university teams, we are certain, did their best and devoted themselves heartily to the work they had in hand. The base-ball material at the opening of last season seemed most unpromising and yet Harvard made a strong showing, owing principally to the energy of Captain Willard. On the other hand, we heard many mutterings that the best men were not all represented on the team, and that a more judicious choosing would have given Harvard a better place in the base-ball contest. We are inclined to doubt the value of these mutterings, for the reason that harmony might have been destroyed if the personnel of the nine had been different. But who, may we ask, has a right to maintain private grievances when his duty lies to his college alone? If we are to regain our prestige the strong undercurrent of Harvard life, which exerts, perhaps, no positive, but a strong negative influence upon our athletics must be overcome. A little more insight into the relations of men to one another, a remembrance, occasionally, of that saying of Robert Burns, "A man's a man for a' that," would work a revolution that would be greeted in Cambridge and by all friends of Harvard elsewhere, as a promise of a greater appreciation on the part of the students here of what they owe to themselves as well as to the past.

The football season is at hand. Will a regenerated opinion show that Harvard can win as well as lose; or will the old lackadaisical spirit-occasioned, we believe, by a morbid fear of criticism-influence those who ought to offer their services and prevent them from making themselves known? If the new students of this year will be brave enough to care nothing for the feelings which certain badly bred but omnipresent persons are rude enough to show, then we may never hear again that remark which has become now extremely trite, "Oh! They don't know how to play foot-ball at Harvard."