In contrast the Blue's athletic debuts against Harvard were singularly unsuccessful. Exactly a century ago, an old Harvard shell, the Oneida, defeated New Haven crews in the morning and afternoon. The 100th anniversary crew race will be celebrated this spring. Sixteen years later, the Crimson won the first baseball game of the rivalry, 25 to 17. In 1875, Harvard won the football opener by four goals and four touchdowns.

Yale's gridiron fortunes soared, however, during the 80's and 90's, when she lost only twice to her former patron. So bad was the situation for the Crimson that the Harvard Daily Herald was prompted to remark in 1882 which may sound familiar to 1951 readers: "Harvard cannot defeat Yale at football unless she consents to place on her team men who will substitute roughness for skill and professional enmity for amateur courtesy. But such a team will never represent Harvard and may never bear its honorable name. A few such contests as that of Saturday will blast forever the reputation of football as being a commendable intercollegiate sport."

By 1908 the shoe was on the other foot, and Percy Haughton was enthusiastically strangling bulldog pups in the pre-game locker-room meetings and urging his team to go out on the field and do the same.

"Rowdy and unmanageable" are the words one observer used to describe the Yale undergraduate body during the post-Civil War era. Statistics of the period show that the average student strongly inclined toward "moderate" drink and that only 13 out of 17 undergraduates refused to be classified as card players.

Bi-Centennial Lacked Splendor

In 1901, Yale was two hundred years old. Describing the bi-centennial celebration in New Haven, Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard wrote," It was a great success as an advertisement and interesting in many ways. But there was a total lack of splendor; there was not dignity or stateliness in the arrangements. The most serious lack was the absence of any presentation of the true ideal of a great university and of its supreme function in a modern democratic society."

It took the only president of Yale since 1766 who was not a Yale graduate to get the New Haven college (actually a university since 1887) on the move again. During his tenure in office from 1921 to 1937, James Rowland Angell of Michigan probably did more to produce the Yale which exists today than any other man. He erected 37 buildings, quadrupled endowments; formed a new engineering school, an observatory at Johannesburg, and the first U. S. graduate school of nursing; pulled the law and medical schools out of the rut, and set up a drama department under George P. Baker, an immigrant from Harvard.

Harkness Millions

During this period, Yale inadvertently did its Cambridge rivals a favor. Edward S. Harkness, in 1928, offered the New Haven school three million dollars to establish the beginnings of a House system. Discouraged by the arguments and delays of the Yale Corporation, Harkness lost patience and offered the money to Harvard instead. Historians claim that it took President Lowell only ten seconds to consider the offer and accept it. In a few weeks Harkness raised the gift to ten million dollars and Harvard's House system was underway.

"Thus," says Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morrison '08, "a Yale man became the greatest benefactor to Harvard in our entire history, making a noble return for the part that Harvard men had taken in founding his alma mater." Three years after Harvard's House system was in operation, Yale, had its College system, also as a result of a gift from Harkness.

President A. Whitney Griswold of Yale, who replaced Charles Seymour last year, suggested last fall that student conferences between representatives of the two colleges might be useful to eliminate the "10 to 25 percent margin" between the Harvard student's apathy toward extra-curricular and college life and the Yale man's overzealousness.

Griswold thinks the Yale student "must learn to do things for their own sake" and not enter extra-curricular activities "to prove he's a big shot."

Yale, traditionally conservative, traditionally waiting for others to lead and then taking the middle path, has shown increasing signs of liberality recently.

One indication of this has been the move to make parietal rules more lenient. The fact that Yale now allows women in rooms until 11 p.m. over the weekends may, however, not be surprising to those who remember the school's founder: Elihu Yale, born in Scollay Square