Under the assonantal headlines:

"Elevens, Good and Poor, Were Cheered

Then the Football Team Appeared

This indifference Sure Is Weird

Indifferent Teams Would Be Smeared

Mr. David F. Egan of the Boston Globe yesterday evening consigned to the immortality of print the thesis which, some what diluted by the exigencies of space, appears below:

"...The staggering development of the week to 10,000 men of Harvard was that the Thursday night rally is to be abandoned this year..."

Mr. Egan follows this statement with a description of football rallies of the past.

"The dormitories would be a mass of steady light, until finally the Harvard Band would form in front of University Hall. One by one those lights would go out. Now and again a student would be discovered who would rather have studied than have attended the rally, but the young man would be dragged out by the strong-arms to lend his unwilling voice to the parade that was to start.

"Down Massachusetts Avenue and through the Square it would stride, picking up disciples at every step. Past the Freshman Dormitories it would rollfe, with a carefree awing that caught the breath-taken Freshman in its surge.

"Up to the Union it would go, with a crashing crescendo that defied the Yard cops, defied forbidding old Sever defied President Lowell himself if said be, and into the living room it would pour, followed by a tidal wave of students..."

In Mr. Egan's narrative the football team then ascends the platform and receives the plaudits of the students.

"Apparently the spirit of old Harvard is not what it was. It is true that the Harvard football authorities themselves did away with the traditional football rally, but did so because in the past two years the Harvard Crimson, which is supposed to express undergraduate sentiment, has scoffed at the idea of undergraduate rallies on the eve of the Yale game...

"But I believe that the undergraduates of today in Cambridge lack the moral courage to back a losing eleven, or a series of losing elevens....

"Obviously the undergraduate body is not united, and it is my humble opinion that its lack of interest is not because of Harvard indifference, but because of lack of spirit on the part of the undergraduates.

"Lack of spirit, did I say? Spirit, in the language of the barracks and of the dormitories and the language of these is quite similar), is nothing but a four-letter word meaning intestinal fortitude, an ugly little word known as "guts."

"If the Harvard team had as little spirit and as little pride as some of the undergraduate body at Harvard, Yale could crawl to victory on its hands and knees. Fortunately for Harvard's pride, however, that is not so."

Mr. Egan's study in the anatomy of student support, like his emotional reminiscences, is excusable by the standard of news value. But even news value has always been drawn sitting at the right hand of truth. Mr. Egan has reversed this juxtaposition in an analysis of Harvard undergraduate sentiment that omits supporting facts. He has also misrepresented in general and falsified in particular the CRIMSON's attitude toward football, football rallies, and the expression of student opinion.

The following quotations, and a categorical dental that the CRIMSON has ever "scoffed at the idea of undergraduate rallies", will serve as restatement of the CRIMSON's position:'

"...The CRIMSON does not 'support' the football team, any more than it 'supports' the Harvard Dramatic Club, the Harvard Glee Club, the Harvard Corporation, the Harvard Lampoon, or the Phillips Brooks House Association..."

"Undergraduate sentiment is too vague and ill-defined, at Harvard at least, to make a suitable foundation on which to build an editorial policy. Every paper represents the opinions and prejudices of those who run and own it." November 21, 1927.

"The paper does not pretend to be a mirror of undergraduate thought. Every Harvard man knows, or comes to know, that there is no such thing at Harvard as composite undergraduate thought. The CRIMSON avowedly expresses the attitude only of its own editors..."   September 22, 1928.

And upon the announcement of the cancellation of the rally:

"Abolishing the Yale football rally is abolishing a tradition. One might feel a little guilty about that, did he not know that the tradition has been soured by unspontaneity. The game is where it has always been, on the knees of the gods and the linemen. And at the needful moment, in the Yale Bowl, it will be for the cheering section to show that Harvard's old and inextinguishable pride in the Harvard team has lost nothing more than a blurring anachronism."   November 19, 1928.