It is very gratifying to see the Mott Haven team so well started on the year's training. Track athletics at Harvard have disappointed their supporters long enough. Time was, when the outcome of the annual intercollegiate games was almost a foregone conclusion; when there was no college which could fairly dispute Harvard's claim to preeminence; but of late years the old order has changed. The new one to which it gives place is far from satisfactory. Three times now in succession Harvard has been obliged to yield first place to an old rival, and last spring saw the University of Pennsylvania step into second place. Harvard third, even though the third is a close one, does not sound well. Second was bad enough, and nothing but first again can bring entire content.

The athletes under Captain Bremer (and what we say of them will apply equally well to the crew and baseball men) have this year a grave responsibility. Success to them means more than it has meant before. It means not the mere maintenance of a position already won, but the restoration to Harvard of her old-time prominence. All lovers of the college long to see Harvard again in the lead in athletics as in intellectual pursuits. If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well; and for Harvard well must always mean better than any other college. For her there should be no excellence but the hightest.