Harvard's hockey team did not leave the ice Wednesday night because the teams had been fighting. Coach Johnny Chase called his men off to prevent a wholesale riot among the large crowd at the New Haven arena.

This was the emphatic assertion of players and spectators alike. Any opinion from Harvard on the subject runs the risk of sounding like sour grapes, but when the circumstances of the game are those of the Yale encounter, something deserves to be said.

Chase's removal of his team after Crimson wingman Dave Abbot had been badly hurt in a run-in with Yale Captain Artie Moher was merely the climax to a contest marred from the start by fighting. Both teams were by that time out for blood and the crowd was readying for battle. Further injuries, or worse, seemed certain.

Neither team can be blamed, for spirit must run high in the rubber game of a Harvard-Yale series. The blame lies squarely on the two referees, Moyland McDonell and Charles Crovat, and on their boss, Asa R. Bushnell of the Eastern Intercollegiate Association.

From the outset both officials were blind to even the most fiagrant violations. In hockey one uncalled foul inevitably leads to another, and the game rapidly degenerated from hockey into a series of fights. The negligent referees, not the teams, should be held accountable for the result.

But even if one chalks up the question of officiating to Bushnell's bad choice of officials, the Abbot-Moher incident cannot be whitewashed so easily.

A fight with Moher had been in the offing all evening. Eventually one particularly bitter scrimmage in front of the Yale cage broke into fisticuffs, whereupon the tardy Messrs. McDonell and Crovat penalized both players. But contrary to general practice, they failed to escort them from the ice, and fighting broke out again when Moher replied to a harmless remark from Abbot by hitting him with his stick.

Abbot dropped his weapon and started swinging, but fell in the process. While he was rising from the ice, Moher hit him in the face with the heel of his stick. Abbot was removed to the hospital, and Chase called the game, for a riot was imminent. Subsequently, doctors put 26 stitches in Abbot's lip and check.

Bad refereeing cannot absolve Captain Art Moher from his incredible display of had sportsmanship. However, it goes without saying that Harvard-Yale hockey relations should not be affected by the Yale captain's detestable action.