With Harvard's chances in athletics for this spring so uncertain, it is to be hoped that she will not be hampered by finding any member of any of the teams on probation. Whether probation takes him from active training merely, or from an important contest, no able athlete should incur it, however lightly he may count the penalty which he himself has to pay. We speak here only of the athlete, for it is not our purpose to lay down any of the general principles of common sense no less than of morality, which condemn the wholesale neglect of college work for college play.

The member of a team has more than a mere personal responsibility for whatever may keep him from actively sharing in the work of the team. He is unfair to his fellows if he hurts their chances by wilfully incapacitating himself; and to incur probation can hardly be anything but wilful. Through the team, too, the athlete is responsible to the college whose representative he is, and these claims of team and college should be binding even when the claims of common sense and morality above referred to, might be heedlessly set aside. In past years Harvard teams have been known to suffer by the loss of men through probation. Before cause has been given this year we protest against the unfairness of such men, so that protest may not seem complaint against a particular individual.