TO ABOLISH WINTER CONTESTS.

The football schedule has been approved with its full quota of games! But with its announcement comes a startling vote from the Athletic Committee, submitting for our consideration a proposition to abolish entirely all intercollegiate contests between the date of the Yale football game and the spring recess.

Before passing an opinion on this action it is only fair to say that the Athletic Committee is in as hard a position as a body of men could well be. Confronted on the one side by two Faculty recommendations "to curtail largely the number of intercollegiate contests," and on the other by an undergraduate sentiment violently opposed to such an action, the Committee has felt called upon to act, and has therefore taken the first step in yielding to the stronger of the two opinions. But, if there is to be a concession it is apparently coming in a modified form, and not exactly as we expected it.

From the very first the CRIMSON opposed any proposition to curtail the number of intercollegiate contests, and our opinion is in no wise altered. We have no faith in the necessity for curtailment or restriction of any kind, not to mention an absolute and unqualified abolishing of intercollegiate contests in all the winter sports. Throughout the year we have taken up in detail the many and varied arguments in favor of intercollegiate sport: its power in holding the undergraduate community together, its good effects upon the participants both morally and physically, its power as an outlet for the energy that in any event would not be expended on studies, its supplement intercollegiate athletics, and lastly the rising undergraduate sentiment against the abuse of athletic privileges. We therefore believe that any athletic reductions are at present unwise and uncalled for, and that in the long run the Committee, with the able assistance of Mr. Garcelon, can eliminate existing evils, and prove conclusively and to the satisfaction of all that the good to be derived from intercollegiate athletics over-whelmingly outweighs the evil.