A more liberal fixing of amateur standing is shown in the report by Harvard's Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports to President Lowell. On the other hand, the determination to exclude professionalism is not relaxed. Last Spring Yale, Princeton and Harvard agreed to take what was a step toward eliminating the professional coach. The head coach was to receive no more than $10,000 this year, $9,000 in 1926 and $8,000 thereafter. This resolution the report just published makes a point of approving, but it adds the proposal that all of the coaches be graduates as soon as the shift can be arranged. Thus, Harvard condemns the practice of importing coaches to which some of the other colleges, most of them in fact, are addicted. This certainly is a movement in the right direction. "Your committee," says the report, "repeats its declared policy of further and more radical agreements with Yale and Princeton and expresses its belief and hope that these three universities may set up a standard which will improve all college athletics." And then there is this declaration:

"But the universities must not merely encourage each other to avoid the dangers of excess and professionalism. They are examples for all the preparatory schools. What we make of collegiate athletics becomes the ideal for school athletics, where our mistakes and our sins are copied, and where their evil consequences are multiplied by the enthusiasm of imitation.

It is a surprise to learn that by the agreement of last Spring athletes were permitted to play baseball at Summer hotels where they were employed, while camp counselors might coach their charges without violating the eligibility rules. More advanced ground is taken theoretically in the matter of amateur standing in this report. It doubts whether a student earning his way through college should be forbidden to accept "a job in the Summer, just because it involves participation in a sport." The argument is made that there is little or no difference in the case of the man who "gets a job in a Summer hotel and plays on the hotel ball nine" and the man who is engaged as a tutor and plays with his pupils. "Both," it is submitted, "are engaged primarily for their athletic ability." That is common sense, although it may disturb sticklers for the old-fashioned code of amateurism. "We must be chary," says the committee, "of forbidding acts when the evil lies only in their abuse or only in the practical difficulty of discrimination." At the same time, there must be regulations to govern amateur standing, and the mistake must not be made of opening the door to evasions. New York Times.