The appeared in the Boston Globe of yesterday a number of letters from Presidents Eliot, Dwight, Barnard, Walker and others, in which these gentlemen expressed their views on the much discussed question whether athletic victories cause an increase in number of students at any college.

President Eliot and one or two others expressed the opinion that athletic victory or defeat has no influence on the attendance at any college. Others, among whom was President Dwight, held that while there were doubtless, some persons who were inclined toward one college or another by its athletic success, the public opinion as regards the number of such person is greatly exaggerated. The general opinion was that such circumstances as athletic victory or defeat do have some effect; but the influence they exercise is confined to a small class of persons.

This view of the case seems to us to be the right one. While it is obviously absurd to attribute a great increase like that in the freshman class at Yale last fall solely to Yale's triumphs on the athletic field; yet it seems to us to be taking a one-sided view of the matter to declare that Yale's continued victories have no influence on the number of men who go to that college. True, this influence is only one of many; but where the other attractions would have no effect athletic victories do.

The statistics in the Globe show an increase of forty per cent, at Yale in the last seven years as compared with an increase of twenty-one per cent, at Harvard. During the same period, out of the thirty-one contests between Yale and Harvard in base-ball, foot-ball, rowing and track athletics, Yale has won twenty-one times, Harvard ten. While these facts may show nothing more than a coincidence, it seems to us to be a more reasonable conclusion to draw from these facts that Yale's victories have been one of the things, at least, that have caused the greatly increased attendance at that college.