The annual classic on the Thames, as the sporting writers have it, marks the end of a memorable Commencement week. Long after the names of this or that speaker or graduate have been forgotten, the memory of the heat will linger. Honors and oratory, spreads and dinners have developed a sense of weariness and have evoked bad temper rather than enthusiasm.

But relief, so we have been assured a dozen times, is in sight and gasping undergraduates and alumni, in fact all those who flock to see the cross section of American life seen on the observation cars, at the Griswold, and perchance on the yachts, will be able once again to locus their attention on things more serious than electric fans and cooling drinks.

For the crew as for the observers relief is perhaps in sight. Admittedly Harvard enters the race with the odds against her a situation warranted by the respective records of the contesting crews. But it is at least interesting perhaps prophetic that for the past three years the race has been analyzed, "doped" and decided in advance on the basis of early-season records and each year the result has belied the odds.

After a disastrous beginning the crew has progreased steadily and the three weeks at Red Top have not been spent in idleness. Yale, it is reported, has lost some of that glorious optimism which seemed so impressive when the crews moved to their training quarters, and Harvard has recovered from that midseason depression which wondered only whether the University had the worst or next to worst crew in the country. It is idle, however, to speculate in this way for the result must rest in the laps of the gods; they have divulged nothing but the promise of a good race fought out between two worthy opponents.