Pregnant questions about intercollegiate athletics are raised by the annual report of President A. Lawrence Lowell to the overseers of Harvard University. The report reflects an attitude that is coming to be assumed by many of those interested in the future of intercollegiate competition. It is everywhere recognized that the growing importance of athletics wherever alumni and undergraduates sentiment is concerned has tendered to rob some enthusiasts of their perspective and has given good grounds for charges of commercialism.

The statement that athletics "make" an institution and that reputation is based on athletic achievement are examples of the fallacies with which some ardent followers of sports have become bamboozled. Alumni demanding intersectional contests and winning teams at any cost voice the belief that no single feature is as important as athletics. From such beliefs spring situations like that which recently occurred when the president of a great eastern university was about to address an alumni gathering. He was asked by the committee in charge to limit himself in his remarks to fifteen minutes because the head football coach was to have the center of the stage for the greater part of the evening.

No one who studies the signs in the skies can doubt that a show-down is coming. Intense interest in sports, to the extent that the primary purposes of a college are forgotten, will build a structure of sentiment that will not stand. No one questions the value of athletics as a great developing instrument for many of the most desirable qualities of mental and bodily strength. Increased athletic facilities and the effort everywhere to interest the greatest possible number in the various forms of sport is a hopeful indication of future dividends in health and citizenship. But somehow or other this "greatest-show-on-earth" philosophy of intercollegiate athletics must be jolted into reasonableness.

Within a few years, well-informed observers believe, the whole question of athletics uber alles will have to be settled. The movement has been started to make athletics the sanely adjusted power for good that they can be. "Sport for sport's sake" will sometime prevail over the attitude that success in sport is the measure of the worth of an institution. Athletics exist for purposes of the colleges: the colleges do not exist for purposes of sport. The Dartmouth