NO MORE FRESHMEN AT NEW LONDON.

THE arguments against intercollegiate boatraces between crews of Freshmen, as presented in your paper of the 12th and 26th November, appear to me unanswerable. They are the same arguments which some of us "old boys" of Yale have taken pains to impress upon several successive generations of new-comers, until at last their further reiteration seems unnecessary. Ever since 1875, when Harvard's representatives consented to the establishment of an annual eight-oared Harvard-Yale race, the unvarying custom of the Yale Boat Club has been to concentrate all its resources on that race; and this policy has now hardened into a fixed tradition. Hence, whatever talk may be raised to the contrary by a minority of "fresh" and shortsighted enthusiasts, the experienced and sagacious majority can always be depended on to insist that the Freshmen of Yale shall never again be allowed to waste their muscle and money in meaningless and uninteresting rowing contests with the Freshmen of other colleges.

In a series of three letters written for the Crimson in January and February of last year, I pointed out some of the obstacles and dangers in the way of attempting to manage a Freshman race at New London within a week of the Harvard-Yale race, and argued that, if the Freshmen of Harvard ('82) insisted on rowing their projected race with Columbia, they would find it to their advantage to accept the offer of the National Association of Amateur Oarsmen, which was then making a creditable (though, as the result has proved, an ineffective) attempt to establish an "American Henley," by offering expensive challenge cups for the exclusive competition of undergraduate crews. As a matter of fact, however, the Freshmen of Columbia, as well as those of Harvard, grew heartily sick of their proposed contest long before the day for rowing it really arrived, and mutually abandoned it with a feeling of relief and "good riddance." This ending was a great relief also to the managers of the Harvard-Yale race, who, after urging that at least a week's interval ought to elapse between the two events, had finally agreed to take charge of the Freshmen's race on the third day following.

Last spring, however, when the representatives of two new sets of Freshmen ('83) appeared at New London to "make arrangements for a race," the managers insisted unequivocally that it should not be rowed on the Thames until at least six days after the Harvard-Yale race. They also gave the Freshmen to understand that they had better select Lake George or Philadelphia or Saratoga, or some other course where good management would gladly be promised them, instead of New London, where their presence would be merely tolerated rather than welcomed. A flat refusal to superintend the proposed race on any conditions whatever was only prevented by a desire to avoid an appearance of incivility in the face of a public which could not be expected to understand the difficulties of the case. Perhaps the last straw which turned the balance was the dislike of the managers to say "No" when one of the applicants from Harvard was "a New London boy;" but they clearly kept in mind the theory that this first Freshman race was an experiment, and that, unless it proved a far more successful one pecuniarily than they had any reason to expect, it should be the last Freshman race ever rowed on the Thames under their auspices.

The actual result is well known. Though the weather was perfect; though the arrangements were unexceptionable; though the crews were so evenly matched that every one predicted a close and exciting contest; and though, in fact, the rowing, merely as rowing, was a much more interesting exhibition than has yet been given by a Harvard-Yale race on the Thames, - the event was a thing of profound indifference to the public. "Absolutely nobody" went to see it. Not two dozen undergraduates from Columbia and not one dozen from Harvard were in attendance. The whole number of people attracted from out of town was less than 200, and the New Londoners themselves very generally ignored the show. Exactly 162 tickets were sold to the grand stand, which was constructed at a cost of $1,200, and had a seating capacity for 3,000 people. The direct money loss of the managers is known to have exceeded $500, and is believed by them to have been nearer $800. Even had the attendance of spectators been large enough to make the receipts exceed the expenses by $1,000, the managers would have been opposed to undertaking another Freshman race; but as the attendance was insignificant, in the face of the most favorable circumstances conceivable for attracting people who like to look at Freshmen, the experiment confirmed beyond hope of change the original belief of those managers. They now plainly say, "We will have no more Freshmen races at New London."

If, therefore, the challenge of Columbia's Freshmen ('84) is accepted at Cambridge, it must be accepted for a race on some other course than the Thames. Perhaps I may, in another letter to your paper or the Advocate, try to exhibit some of the reasons which make the task of management on this particular course peculiarly arduous as well as expensive. I wish, too, that I had the power to make the undergraduates of both colleges realize more clearly the necessity of having a solid financial basis for the good management of their annual boat race. The "transportation interest" supplies this basis at New London, the "hotel interest" supplies it at Saratoga; and there are absolutely no other places in America where either interest is strong enough to find any pecuniary advantage in guaranteeing proper management for such an exceedingly costly affair as the annual Harvard-Yale race in its present form. The keeping of a clear course on the Thames, at the first trial in 1878, was an unprecedented achievement, implying an amount of preliminary labor never before given to any boat-race arrangements in the United States; and that the running down of the press boat on that occasion (by the only man afloat who refused to obey the managers' regulations) failed to result in loss of life was little less than a miracle. Equally astonishing was the good luck of a year later, when the squall of wind forced the impatient fleet of sailboats to swoop down in the wake of the long-delayed crews, and when it seemed inevitable to those of us in the midst of it that death must also be swooping down in the darkness.

Death did indeed claim two victims from the spectators of last summer's race; and people whose information about the calamity was gained at second hand, and was entirely erroneous, did not scruple to offer public censure of the managers for their assumed remissness, - one writer even venturing to brand them as "criminals." This sort of talk, no matter how absurdly unjust, is not pleasant to those against whom it is uttered, for no one likes to be told that he ought to be a jail-bird, even when his self-appointed judge is a person ill-informed and powerless. Hence I beg leave to ask such collegians at Cambridge as think it wise to have the historic name of "Harvard" publicly championed upon the water by her youngest and greenest representatives, "Is it reasonable to expect that the New London managers, after receiving this abuse for an accident for which they were perfectly blameless, should take upon their shoulders the burden of providing for Freshmen crews, whose presence upon the Thames would add another element to the already sufficiently difficult task of conducting without accident the annual Harvard-Yale race?"

Though this communication is already too long, I would ask in conclusion that you reprint the closing words of the letter to which the Nation of August 5 gave up two and a half columns of its space. After demonstrating the falsity of the facts which several writers had alleged against the "observation train," and the fallacy of the conclusions based upon them, I asserted concerning the arrangements actually used in running the train, that "no one of the managers has yet seen any reason to doubt that this is the best possible plan, or to hesitate about adhering to it hereafter." My final remarks were as follows: -

"The real danger which threatens the visiting public at New London - or which would threaten it were the present managers to be superseded by others less careful and sagacious - is not connected with the observation train, but attaches rather to a theory of management hinted at by the writer who supplied to the Nation its report of the boat race. His suggestion that perhaps the addition of subsidiary 'events' might attract a larger crowd to the Harvard-Yale contest, would, if adopted by the managers, have a tendency to put more lives in peril annually than the running of a dozen observation trains. Easily as one may abuse the superlative degree, I am surely within the limits of moderation in saying that the unanimity and unreservedness of the praise bestowed by the newspaper press, for three successive seasons, on the New London managers, is something entirely singular and unique in American aquatic annals. That praise would never have been won, however, had not those managers accepted at the outset, as a vital rule for their guidance, the theory that, in a college rowing contest on the Thames, a single race between two crews is the most that may be safely attempted within the limits of a single day. The experience of three seasons have simply served to strengthen them in that theory. They believe, furthermore, that the people of New England who take pleasure in seeing a short, sharp, and decisive trial of strength between her two oldest and most famous colleges, will always be attracted to New London in numbers sufficiently great to make the profits of transporting them pay for the costs of good management; and they have no intention of ruining their own present prestige by attempting a complicated 'regatta' which might attract a larger crowd than they could safely control."

A YALE GRADUATE OF '69.WASHINGTON SQUARE, N. Y., Dec. 3, 1880.