The New York Times, in a recent issue, takes occasion to characterize the spirit of those Yale and Harvard graduates who are working for the dual league as unsportsmanlike. After censuring Harvard for her action in the matter of base ball with Princeton this spring, the Times goes on to say that "Yale does not find Princeton such an unworthy opponent," but "Harvard on the other hand is trying to hasten the dual league, her men giving it the significance of a close alliance which places all other colleges at a disadvantage. Apropos of the discussion of the dual league is the stand taken by the Harvard CRIMSON. That paper has for some time urged the consummation of the dual league with little regard to its significance or effect;" and the article ends by quoting entire a recent editorial of the CRIMSON on the final arrangement for annual track athletics between Yale and Harvard.

The Times is not the only one of the New York papers which, in attempting to criticize the plans for a dual league, have shown that they wholly misunderstand the nature of such a league. All these critics have seemed to conclude that if Harvard and Yale formed a dual league they would straightway refuse to compete with any other colleges. We should like to say once for all that Harvard men have no such conception of a dual league. We cannot speak for Yale, but unless we are greatly mistaken, she will unite with Harvard in protesting that neither college, in the event of a dual league, has any idea of shutting down on contests with other colleges. The dual league neither in theory nor in practice would tend to prevent Harvard and Yale from contesting with other fair-minded colleges. If this point is now clear enough, we hope the commentators in the public press will take advantage of it and will not again mistake the purposes of a dual league.

The Times has asked us to "explain the value of this dual league in track and field athletics and its probable effect on the intercollegiate games." The value in track and fiald athletics is much the same as in other branches of sport. Harvard and Yale are anxious to meet as rivals in every sport and prove the superiority. At the intercollegiate meetings, where the winning or the losing of the cup turns most frequently upon the points won by some small college, no chance is given to prove the real superiority between the two colleges. Take the last intercollegiate games, for instance, where Harvard won by 31 points to Yale's 29 1-2. Everything turned on a single event in which points were won by one of the smaller colleges. Harvard has no intention, of which we know, of withdrawing from the inter-collegiate games and, consequently, we hardly see how the probable influence of the dual league on the intercollegiate athletics would be, as the Times seems to hint, bad. Neither Harvard nor Yale is likely soon to give up the chance for glory in winning a championship in which all the colleges compete.