As Yale's swimming team moiled and thrashed to complete victory, one more square wheel in the Harvard athletic system jarred to a stop. Throughout the year two thirds of the squad consistently competed in nine out of eleven possible victories. But only six of these will get a major H. The rest will have to console themselves with minor letters as recognition of their effort. For under Harvard's unique and cobweb-hung system, not those who compete, but only those who place against Yale earn a full emblem. A man can be one of the two best on his squad in an event, and still not display the big award. It takes at least fifteen men to play a football game, and they all get their letter, win or lose. To swim the nine events in a regular A. A. U. meet, thirteen or fourteen are needed. But they have to defeat the best swimmers in the country before they can be decorated.

The other major winter sports, basketball and hockey, get two cracks at Old Eli, swimming, only one. A baseball player may garner in his letter while picking off a few dandelions in the outfield as the last strike in the last inning of the last game with Yale is hurled. But in the middle of a clinched 220, no substitute arches into the pool to finish the race and receive his reward.

Under the present victory system some of the greatest of the Harvard greats would have had to be content with a minor H this year. Coach Ulen might have had two breastrokers as good as Fritz Berizzi, and two divers as outstanding as Rusty Greenhood, but comparative times and scores show that they would have placed only third and fourth against Yale. One of them would have gotten on major letter.

The rottenness and unfairness of this system of recognizing merit cannot be denied. The team is saddled with rank and totally unnecessary injustice. The solution is obvious and compelling. Letters must be awarded to all who compete against Yale, should they tap the edge a glorious first, or a die-hard fourth.