Inexcusably boasting no beards, the chess team still wins. How they manage without beards is a mystery, and yet they do manage.

Without heads, they copped the coveted Belden-Stephens trophy for the fifth consecutive year, thus permanently snatching it from under startled Yale, Columbia, and Princeton noses.

Without beards, they chalked up Harvard's only unbeaten record of the Christmas vacation, in the competition in New York for that same trophy.

Tradition shrieks at this slight on beards. By heards, are pondering heads kept in that proper balance and angle for peering at the checkered battlefield. They filter the impulsive tang from fresh air, admitting only the essence of mouldering decay so much a part of chess atmosphere.

Reeking Harvard tradition staggers with admiration and askance before the feats of team bulwarks, Julian J. Leavitt '49, William H. Watts '50, Broward R. Craig, Jr. '48, and Frank H. David '49.

Even now they are battling their way up through the long term Boston metropolitan league competition, un-heralded, unsung, and unbearded.