What Happened at Springfield.

The letter which is printed below gives a full account of the proceedings at Springfield Tuesday:

CAMBRIDGE, May 27, 1891.

Professor J. W. White, Chairman Harvard Athletic Committee:

DEAR SIR-The Harvard representatives invested by your Committee with full power to adjust, if possible, the existing difficulties in baseball between Yale and Harvard, submit the following report:

In response to the request of several of our graduates in New York, we went to New York, met there Mr. Adee to whom we submitted the following proposition, with request that he would lay it before the Yale authorities, namely:

That Yale and Harvard, following the precedent established in track athletics, should enter into a nine years' arrangement for an annual series of four games of baseball and for an annual game of football; that if this arrangement should prove acceptable to Yale, Harvard stood ready to play Princeton this year in baseball, each college being left free to make such arrangements as it pleased with other colleges in the future. We suggested further that a committee from Yale with full powers meet a similar committee from Harvard at Springfield, Tuesday, May 26, to consider this proposition.

In answer to telegrams from Mr. Adee and Mr. Camp, we met these gentlemen at Springfield yesterday. They did not come, however, with full power to act for Yale, but suggested that Harvard play two games with Yale this year and one with Princeton, without considering any arrangements for the future. To this we could not consent, but we were willing to modify our proposal so far as to confine it to baseball.

We said that in making our proposition we were willing to assume that Harvard's undergraduate representative had given an unwarranted assurance that Harvard would play games of ball with Princeton this year; that such assurance was reasonably believed by Yale's undergraduate representatives to be given with authority; and that Yale, acting on such assurance, signed her agreement with Harvard and subsequently made arrangements with Princeton which might not otherwise have been consummated, although on all these points there is room for grave doubts. We said further that the Harvard athletic authorities were altogether ignorant of this alleged assurance until after the receipt of Yale's letter of May 9th, declining our invitation to play a series of four games, and that the arrangements with Yale and Princeton were cancelled in the belief that those agreements were understood by all concerned to be provisional and subject to ratification by the Athletic Committee in accordance with a rule of several years' standing which requires all undergraduate schedules to be approved by that Committee in order to be final.

As we were ready to make all the assumptions just mentioned in favor of Yale and thus to make all honorable amends for any possible injustice to Yale caused by our cancellation of the Princeton-Harvard provisional arrangement, we felt that it was only fair to couple with the settlement of the difficulty of this year an arrangement by which diplomatic negotiations with all their attendant evils might be reduced to a minimum hereafter. We pointed out that such an arrangement was only a formal recognition of the existing custom by which Yale and Harvard meet in all the sports every year; that both Universities were left with a free hand as to making engagements with other colleges; that, if Yale objected to the hardship of playing two series of games annually-one with Harvard and one with Princeton-unless Harvard also played two series, it would always be possible under this arrangement for Yale to ascertain Harvard's intentions before committing herself to games with Princeton. We attempted also to make it clear that Harvard's attitude towards Princeton is altogether friendly, and that we saw no reason why Harvard should not play ball with Princeton hereafter in the same manner that she might play with other colleges; but that we were unalterably opposed to any arrangement with Yale conditioned upon mutual pledges to play with any third college.

Respectfully yours,

J. B. AMES. F. W. THAYER. WILLIAM HOOPER. G. A. STEWART. C. W. SMITH.