Uphold Foot Ball.

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON: -We hear with greatest regret that the branch of athletics, which of all others had engaged the interest of the college through many years, is now threatened with a most inglorious end. There may be many objectionable features in the game of foot ball "as it is now played," but they are features in many instances productive of more good than harm.

The charges of brutality are altogether exaggerated. That only is brutal which is entered into in a brutal spirit. In any contest of rough strength in which great ends are at stake, the players are easily roused into a state of great excitement, under which they treat not their opponents only, but themselves, without much thought of results, But it is always in most thorough good feeling. However fierce the game may have been, we can recall no instance of a player bearing personal animosity toward any opponent after the game had ended.

This enthusiasm to which a man is stirred, and which prompts him to sacrifice himself for the success of his side, is one of the chief arguments in favor of foot ball. Any man who has learned to display determination on the foot ball field, is very certain to show it in any work of life be may afterward enter. The Duke of Wellington declared that all his great victories had been decided long before on the foot ball fields of England. Moreover, a few bruises cannot offset the advantages of that training whose great aim is to develope coolness of head and promptness of decision.

We freely acknowledge that foot ball is rough, but it is that very roughness that makes the sport so manly. Besides, the game appears much worse to spectators than it really is. The "throws" and "falls" are seldom serious, and we may say that permanent injury is as rare as in any other form of exercise. In the Yale game, on which the Athletic Committee seem to have come to their decision, no one of the players was in the least hurt, and no one was obliged to leave the field. In English schools, the students are obliged to play foot ball, and in that country the game is, on account of the "hacking" and "tripping" that is allowed, far more dangerous than it is here.

If the faculty go so far as to forbid all athletics of a violent nature and confine us to the cultured evolutions of the chest-weights and running track, they will doom the college to a state of happiness and effeminacy, far more disasterous in its results, morally and physically, than foot ball can ever be. Although only two teams represent the college, from fifty to seventy-five men engage in the game constantly during the season. These are for the most part, men of much energy and great animal spirit, whose natures crave some form of stirring excitement. The faculty will do well to consider what sources of excitement will remain, after all purely monument ones have been stopped.

There is so little vigorous manhood among us now that the very name we should most glory in, has become a term of ridicule, but if the little that still redeems us is taken away, Harvard will become synonymous for all that is weak, purile and despicable.

S.