Ordinarily not a sanguinary sport, fencing scored its first surgery of the year on its swing southward last weekend, when the Varsity team met Columbia, the Navy, and the New York Fencers' Club. Six-foot-one Dick Ford was exchanging ripostes and flesches with Potter of Columbia when Ford's epee snapped off into a jagged edge. Potter's lunge spitted him on the remaining blade, with the net result that six stitches has to be taken below the ribs.

The weekend trip as a whole was a success, except for the loss to the Navy, which mars an otherwise undefeated season. Six victories have been chalked up, and the prospects for Yale and Princeton seem rosy with the Crimson leading by comparative scores.

Graduate Champions

Of especial interest this year is the graduate team, which has informal matches with the Varsity and has won all but one of the New England amateur trophies. The other one was taken by the Varsity. Members include John Hurd, last year's Varsity captain and intercollegiate foils champion; Henry Walker, captain in '33 and New England sabre champion; and Henry Wesselman, captain in '31 and expert foilsman. Holding the intercollegiate epee team trophy at present, the graduates are conceded a good chance to annex the intercollegiate title this year.

The sport has been organized at Harvard since 1894, when Harvard joined the Intercollegiate Fencing Association with Yale and Columbia.

Rene Peroy came in 1929 to take over the coaching job with a brilliant record behind him. After winning a national championship in 1926, he fenced on the Olympic team two years later, winning the individual three-weapon title. Since the age of seven, he has fenced at least one hour every day, and while at Harvard has usually spent five or six. Equally proficient in the foils, epee, and sabre, he has expressed a slight preference for the sabre.

Peroy's name is on practically all the cups for national competition that can be found in New York, and he has been acknowledged as the best all around professional fencer in the United States