Editors Daily Crimson:

Your editorial of yesterday, criticizing the comparison of the growth of Harvard and Yale which recently appeared in the Advocate and Monthly, is not wholly accurate. May I suggest a few corrections?

Your question the validity of conclusions drawn from percentages, explaining that "unless Yale gains not merely in percent. but gains more in actual numbers than Harvard, it will always be behind." It would certainly be an agreeable spectacle to watch the delusive exultation of Yale at rolling up every year an enormous increase by percentage, Harvard meanwhile quietly outstripping her in actual increase. The explanation of such a process, however, would belong to the higher mathematics. And in point of fact it is the rate of gain which throws light upon the future. The number of men from the south and west rose from 44 in Harvard '91, to 49 in Harvard, '92; and at Yale in the same classes from 45 to 54. The difference between a gain of 5 and one of 9 is trifling in itself; and yet if the same ratio were kept up, Harvard 1901 would have but 163 from that part of the country, while Yale would have 279. This is merely an illustration. It happens that from '89 to '93, while Yale rose from 37 to 52, Harvard actually fell from 47 to 41. Under these circumstances it is not enough to proclaim that Harvard always has gained the faster, and therefore always will.

There is one passage, however, which stands by itself in versatility of misapprehension, if you will excuse the phrase. It is this: "What good will it do us to pick out of a hundred years the three in which accident gave Yale a greater proportional increase than Harvard, and argue from this trifle that Harvard is going to the dogs?" There are four things to be said in regard to this.

In the first place, the Advocate took for comparison every fourth class from 1878 to 1890: covering twelve years instead of three. The Monthly gave figures for five, not three freshman classes. And the results, obtained independently by men working upon different sets of facts, were identical in their trend.

Secondly, as an index of what we may expect in the future, statistics for 1889-90 are more significant than those elsewhere alluded to in your editorial, for 1820-30. If the latest figures are the most unfavorable, as is the case, so much the worse for the college, and for the investigator who "picks them out."

Thirdly, will the CRIMSON explain why a gain made by Yale is necessarily due to "accident?" What accident? What, by comparison, is the immutable law upon which the growth of Harvard rests? Is not this the attitude of the traditional ostrich, which buries its head in the sand when it gets into difficulties?

The Monthly, finally, neither argued nor implied that Harvard is going to the dogs. The extension of her influence, as measured by her gain in numbers, has not corresponded of late to her internal development as we in Cambridge know it. This tendency to stagnation must be checked if she is to hold her own; in other words it must be recognized, analyzed, and the remedy pointed out. The main trouble-and this is the only justification for so frank an exposure as the two comparisons in question-is perfectly obvious. The truth about Harvard is not sufficiently known outside. Our graduates are not so active, so loyal, as those of the rival by whom we instinctively measure ourselves. And above all, the Harvard clubs, which should be centers for enthusiastic missionary work, have too often come to mean nothing more than a dinner once a year, and the empty ceremony of singing "Fair Harvard" after it. If this is so, it is not wise policy to take it for granted that we will get along somehow and decry discussion. For discussion, in itself, is the remedy needed-unless college spirit is extinct. None of us believe that.