ATHLETICS ADJOURNED.

The final adjournment of University football until after a touchdown has been scored across the Hun goal line has come to pass, but not without bringing pangs of regret to the hearts of its numberless adherents. The effort to keep the game alive during the war was manifest last season by the trial of the "informal system." Again this year an endeavor has been made to arrange games between representative teams of the large colleges.

The latest and strongest of these efforts has been the projected contest between Harvard and Princeton for the benefit of the United War Workers' drive. But, worthy as the object of such a game would be, the University has very rightly-placed its stamp of disapproval upon the scheme.

To prepare a football team adequately to represent the University requires a great deal of time from both the players and the coaches. Can this time be spared from our ever increasing efforts to win the war? Most obviously it cannot. To ask it of the men would not only be unfair to the Nation which urgently needs them as officers in the shortest time that they can prepare for duty, but it would be unjust to the men themselves who are being tried by a competitive test which requires all of their mental and physical energy to assure success to themselves.

The men have realized and accepted the responsibility which rests upon them as the officer material for the military forces of the Nation. Nowhere has this fact been shown more plainly than in the small number of men who have responded to the call for football candidates. At Yale the total number who came out was nine--not men enough for one team, not to mention the necessary sub-elevens. In other colleges this same scarcity of men for major athletics has been constantly experienced.

Again, with no major teams to monopolize their time, the coaches can devote their attention to all those who come out for physical development. The coaches are on hand from two to five o'clock every afternoon, and they are glad to direct the athletic work of those who can report for it. Hence, the opportunity is present for each member of a unit in Harvard University to make himself physically fit,--to do that is a duty encumbrant upon every man who desires to serve his country most efficiently. It is the physical development of the men in general that is wanted,--not the development of a limited number of supermen, who can attain their superiority only at the expense of their work in the military units.

Since the existence of football as a University enterprise is not compatable with the best interests of the Nation during the present crisis, let us drown our regrets and, after the Kaiser has been securely caged, we will again take up successfully our yearly task of taming the Tiger and the Bulldog.