HIT THE LINE FOR HARVARD.

It was inevitable that, in spite of any ready made dictum of any national or sectional athletic organization, there would be football this fall. When the frosty delirium of autumn is in the air, and the southing sun shines on the goal posts of the stadium, we remember proud victories of the past, and no less proud defeats. Though the five continents be swallowed up in war, and the Kaiser twist his embattled moustaches a thousand times a day with the fierce conceit of conquest, still football will go on. As long as there is one ball to boot, and one goal line to cross, and two men to meet shoulder against shoulder at the last stand on the fourth down, football will go on.

There is a gladiatorial splendor about football which makes an elemental and therefore all the more strong appeal to young men, who are usually quite elemental. We may hope that it is the representative national game. It surely represents a higher ideal than baseball, which is an elaborate nonsense. The bravest of the Spartans would have felt a not ignoble thrill, sitting in the top row under the collonades, when Mahan met LeGore. It is a Roman game; it is a brave game.

There will not be much of a team this year, as Harvard teams go. The team will have none of the polish of a smooth war machine. That does not matter. It will, unless some great cataelysm has occurred, be a good team, for it will do, its best.

There will be a great deal of consolation for many hundreds of men on the battle-fields and the battle seas of Europe, to know that there are eleven good men and true, wearing the crimson jersey and pushing the muddy ball down the long field against the tide of defeat. Memory holds men more strongly than present discomfort. There are many loyal sons of Harvard, who, though disaster compass them about, will forget their weariness of limb and spirit when they hear the news from how that the team played a great game. Theirs will be the clear remembrance of pleasanter hours, which may not be eradicated.

The good football man plays well at the game of life. There are few shirkers among the line and backfield. There are no cowards. So very many have gone that only the barest semblance of a team may be organized. That speaks well for the value of football as a training.

We who are left in the College must put a good team on the field; not simply a winning team, but a clean team, a hard-fighting team, and gentlemen. That is in justification to ourselves, lest men say that the best have gone, and that there are none brave enough to fill the place they left vacant.