Five defeats out of seven encounters, a certain lack of the essential drive, and a slackness among individual members in matters of team play and training is the record which the baseball squad has presented to the University during the past three weeks. It has been a number of years since Harvard has had to face such a major sport problem. We have hesitated for a long time before admitting that fact; there seems now but little doubt that it is, unfortunately, true.

But before pointing the finger of blame at the coach, the captain, the batteries, the infield or the outfield, the University must pull itself out of the state of lethargy into which it has dropped and consider. It is too easy to shriek accusations at the box score in the Sunday papers, and to criticize over a dinner table. Few men stop to think that it is the undergraduate body as a whole that is responsible for a team; if a better nine cannot be produced it is because the College has not the collective ability to furnish it, and to back it. And to back it! There lies the root of the present trouble.

The Old Alumnus who has been watching the recent games told us yesterday that never in his memory has the cheering section of a visiting team from another state been more enthusiastic than the College section--yet recently this has been so. He repeated the axiom, no less true because it is very, very old, that an unsupported team can seldom win.

It is encouraging to learn that the undergraduates have at last been roused to a realization of this fact. Starting with the game today, and continuing thereafter, there must be a crowd in the bleachers which will not only stimulate the nine to its greatest efforts, but also convince them that no Harvard team will be abandoned by the College merely because it has begun a season in an unfortunate way. On Saturday there will be a parade to the field behind a band, and the Dartmouth game will be played to the accompaniment of a cheering section of pre-war volume. With adequate outside support, the prime essential hitherto lacking this year, the minor problems of the ball team will fade into oblivion.