To the Editors of the Crimson:

Seven years ago Harvard won the great football game over Yale. Victory was expected, for the whole University had perfect confidence in the final success of a great team.

We won: and then followed the celebration. By Monday morning several of the buildings in the Yard were decorated with crimson bunting; but it was not until evening that the enthusiasm reached its height, with a procession round the Yard and through the neightboring streets to Jarvis Field where there was a rousing bonfire. Here, too, were made those speeches which few undergraduates of that time will ever forget.

Saturday we won another great game. The team played fine ball and were supported throughout the game by perhaps the most effective cheering ever heard on Holmes Field. The spontaneity with which the whole crowd of Harvard men surrounded the Carey Building at the close of the game must have made every one feel the truth of the Harvard spirit.

As far as the great body of the undergraduates was concerned, the celebration of the evening was apparently to be an unqualified success; but now the "muckerism"- vandalism is too classic a term-of a few men in painting the John Harvard statue has probably already effaced in the public mind any recollection of the more rational joy of the many.

It seems needless to remind any one of the loss that such an act brings to the University, not merely in dollars and cents (for it is well-known that similar foolish acts in the past have caused such material loss), but principally in dignity and prestige throughout the country. It would be superfiuous to mention all these things were it not for the fact that several important games-and victorious games, too, we believe-still remain. In view of this, is the whole University patiently to submit to the disgrace of Saturday night? To do nothing to discover the offenders? To invite by mere formal protest in its publications a renewal of such actions in the near future? Is there no way by which the celebration of all athletic victories can be managed by a large and widely representative committee of undergraduates duly elected for that purpose?

HARVARD '94.