Today the first impressions as to the power of the University football team will be gleamed by those who witness the Bates game. A great deal has previously been printed in the newspapers from coast to coast about the relative merits of eastern and western football elevens. In these accounts Harvard's strength has been rated high enough to give any reader the impression that to win the football championship of the east we have only to trust to the ability of several individuals who were on the team last year. The CRIMSON believes that the thinking undergraduate will immediately discard these "doped" press statements as valueless and accede to the following truths which must be realized about the Harvard football situation.

We have the utmost confidence in Captain Brickley and Coach Haughton to give Harvard a team which shall merit our highest approbation. In their efforts to build such a team they have our unbounded interest and hearty support. From the experience of recent years we well realize that eleven men, and not a few individuals, make the victorious type of football team. A difficult task confronts the coaches in choosing these eleven men. They must be qualified to work as a unit against the strongest opposition Harvard has yet known. Michigan, Princeton, Yale, and every other team on the schedule will battle their hardest to defeat us. It is in realization of this that we now send forth the ominous warning against over confidence. To heed it and give unwavering support to the team in the game today and in those to follow is the surest way we can strengthen our hopes of dedicating the new Yale Bowl to defeat in November.