The whole history of intercollegiate leagues has pointed pretty plainly to the result which is brought out with peculiar emphasis by the recent trouble in the Intercollegiate Football Association. That association is now divided against itself to such an extent that it probably cannot survive another season and very soon we must look for another mode of regulating intercollegiate relations. Wesleyan for one reason or another left the association last Saturday and cancelled her game with Yale; Pennsylvania feels so sore over the recent action that she would probably withdraw from the association if the eligibility of her players was questioned to the extent of official protest; the remaining colleges, Yale and Princeton, seem to have no settled relations with each other. Such a state of affairs is very unsatisfactory to every one who feels that college athletics above all should be free from politics and securely based on frankness and sincerity. Surely this mutual distrust and suspicion is unmanly and unsportsman like and entirely out of harmony with Yale's great moral purpose to purify athletics. All this internal disorder shows beyond question that an intercollegiate athletic league composed of more than two members cannot live in peace and harmony. There will be combinations and wire-pulling and compromise and friction as long as two or three can unite to overwhelm a third or fourth; it will be politics instead of athletics, treason and hatred instead of loyalty and good feeling.

What, then, is the most logical solution of the question? How are the colleges and universities to regulate their athletic relations so that these points of dispute shall not arise? It seems to us that the dual league system, as that system is understood here at Harvard, is the best road out of the difficulty. Written compacts, in black and white, will have to be made between each two of the institutions before this petty squabbling can be stopped. Harvard has a perfectly plain agreement with Pennsylvania in football and with Yale in other sports, which practically settles the points over which there has been so much dispute in the association. This is precisely the thing which will have to be resorted to in other cases. This mode of settling the question will not only bring harmony and honor into our athletic relations to each other, but will eventually point out the best standard of eligibility of players and will decide other vexed questions. It may be found at first that Harvard and Yale will agree on a set of rules slightly different from those of Yale and Princeton. One set of rules, one standard of eligibility, which is what we hope most to see, will eventually be found most fair and the good sense of college men will see that it is generally adopted. While it is true that dual leagues cannot be formed between the larger institutions and all the smaller ones it should be remembered that this does not interfere with games between them. Whether this plan will meet with general approval we know not; certain it is, however, that until some such plan is adopted this bickering, which sensible men look upon with so much regret, will continue to be the rule and not the exception.