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It is now an acknowledged fact that communications have been sent from Yale to Cambridge, (Eng.,) with a view to the settlement of the question of a meeting between the crews of the respective colleges. Captain Woodruff of the Yale crew admits that letters have passed between representatives of the colleges, but denies that such correspondence is official. He further expresses himself as follows in regard to the probability of a successful termination of negotiations:
"Yale is very anxious to row a race with an English crew. There was not a man in our boat last June after our race with Harvard who would not have gladly remained in training if a race could have been secured. Yale will begin official negotiations very shortly with Cambridge relative to arranging a race if it is possible to do so. One or two things, however, may prove rather considerable obstacles. In the first place, any idea of a race between Yale and Cambridge in April, as has been suggested by the newspapers, is out of the question. Yale has only a week's vacation in April, and it would not be possible for the men to go across the water then. They would lose too much time from their work. No American college crew ought to go abroad for a race without calculating for at the very least estimate, five weeks for the trip. A week for the voyage, and a month in which to get over illness consequent upon a long sea journey and in which to get in physical condition for a race and get used to the English water, are the smallest periods of time that can possibly be considered. Moreover, if Yale is to row an English crew, the only inducement for such a race is to determine the merits of the best university eights of the two countries, America and England. It would be unfair to Yale, and indeed to all lovers of rowing in this country, to put a crew on the water representing Yale which was not the best that Yale could furnish. It must be, in short, a representative Yale crew and a representative American university crew.
"If this is true, and I believe it to be true, the only time in which Yale can row an English crew is in July or August. We could not in any possible way, shape, or manner, get our crew into its best shape as early as April. Why, the ice doesn't break up in New Haven Harbor so that we can get on the water before the middle or end of March. It needs all the time that we can get, every hour of it, between April 1 and July 1, to get our crews into their best form.
"Again, the race with Harvard is toward the end of June, and if we trained our crew for a race in April it would be hard to keep them in fit physical condition for the June race with Harvard. These reasons seem to us here at Yale to e weighty enough almost to necessitate placing the date of the proposed Yale-Cambridge race in July or early in August. We don't know how the Englishmen feel about it because we have not heard from them yet. We shall open negotiations soon and see how they look at the question."
Of last year's crew, Woodruff, Gill, Corbin, Hartwell, and Brewster are now in college, while Carter is expected to join the college soon. Caldwell, Yale's famous stroke, is in the Divinity School and could be easily persuaded to take a seat in the boat.
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