[We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest. The Crimson is not, however, responsible for the sentiments expressed in such communications as may be printed.]

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The CRIMSON has asked for information about the rule limiting participation in intercollegiate athletics to two periods of sport in any one academic year.

The rule was passed in October, 1904. Although absent at the time, the writer believes that he is correct in assuming that the regulation simply indicates the unwillingness of the Athletic Committee to countenance the continuous devotion to athletics and the amount of absenteeism involved in membership on some University athletic team during the whole University year. The rule applies only to intercollegiate, not to interclass or intramural contests, and was not designed to prevent men from taking any amount of exercise desired, or even from indulging in continuous training.

The corresponding but somewhat more sweeping regulation at Princeton indicated perhaps somewhat more clearly one phase of the question; namely, that the college does not desire to encourage undue absenteeism from work. The Princeton regulation was:

"No student shall belong to more than two university organizations in any one year which would require his absence from town in term time."

The College point of view is indicated by President Eliot's remarks in his Report for 1902-03 (pp. 40-41): "The breaking up of College work for the individual student by frequent absences to play games at a distance from Cambridge is an evil which ought to be checked. It is a greater evil than formerly, now that intercollegiate games take place all the year round--that is, in winter, as well as in spring and autumn."

It is not, however, the business of the Athletic Committee to drive students into the class room or to devise methods to keep them at work; and it is hardly a valid criticism of the regulation, that a student is not thereby prevented from spending his leisure in some other way which may equally hinder him from study, or from embracing the many opportunities for other serious occupations. It might similarly be maintained that the restrictions of "probation" are useless because they do not prevent a student from spending his time in various other unchecked diversions. That rule implies chiefly that the University is not to be represented publicly by men who are not doing satisfactory work.

The suggestion in the CRIMSON that men spend a good deal of time on second teams and scrub teams, and that the rule, to be more effective, should be extended to cover such cases, has some weight in view of the growth of the out-of-town schedules for second teams. The whole question seems primarily a matter for the Faculty to decide. Perhaps a reference to the Administrative Board for approval or disapproval might be advisable. In the reorganization of athletics which is under way, it should be seriously considered whether all matters affecting scholarship should not, as at Cornell and Yale, be relegated or restored to Faculty jurisdiction.

The complaint is sometimes heard that there are too many restrictions and regulations governing college athletics. This may be true. What is equally true is that these regulations and restrictions have not been established to fit a theory, but are the results of attempts to check or control actual abuses, actual dangers, and to meet actual emergencies and difficulties, or actual criticisms and demands from fellow institutions. These assertions could be verified by a study of athletics at Harvard during the past quarter of a century. The present body of rules has been the slow product of years of trial and experience; and has been subject to constant scrutiny, with a desire to adapt it to existing conditions, nowhere more than in the Athletic Committee itself. That the whole code has not been thoroughly overhauled and simplified during the last two years, as was planned by the Committee in the spring of 1904, is due to causes quite beyond the control of that Committee.  H. S. WHITE.