College Athletics.

An interesting article on "The Position of College Athletics," by Professor Hadley of Yale, appears in the present number of the Bachelor of Arts. The Article is of general interest and in part is as follows:

"The development of college athletics has been of great service in counteracting some of the dangerous tendencies of the day. Open to criticism as athletics may be for their unnecessary expense, for the betting which goes on in connection with them, and for the distorted views which they encourage as to the relative importance of different things in life, they yet have a place in education which is of overwhelming importance. The physical training which they involve, good as it may be, is but a small part of the benefit achieved. The moral training is greater. Where scores of men are working hard for athletic honor, and hundreds more are infected by their spirit, the moral force of such an emulation is not to be despised.

Critics may object, and do object, that athletic prowess is unduly exalted, and that it involves distortion of facts to rate the best football player, or best oarsman, higher than the best scholar or debater. But the critic is not wholly right in this. There is a disposition in the college world to recognize in the highest degree anything which redounds to the credit of the college. Let a student write something which brings honor to his college, whether in science or literature, and there is no limit to the recognition he receives from his fellows. Let a football player strive to win glory for himself instead of for his college, and his fellows have no use for him. What the critic deems to be preference for the body over the mind is in no small measure preference for collective aims over individual ones. It may be a short-sighted view of the matter to think of the high stand man as working for himself, and the athlete as working for his college. Yet it is one which contains a large element of truth; and the honor paid to college athletics is based on a healthful recognition of this half truth which the critic so often overlooks.