A CREW'S CRUISE

On Saturday afternoon, doing the mile and seven-eighths distance in sadly slow time, the University crew, for the first time in at least three years, trailed the Freshman eight by three lengths. This is a statement of fact sufficiently startling, but when it is considered that the Freshmen would naturally be the easiest opponents the crew will meet this year, it is evident that the chances of winning any future races remain no longer on the laps of the high gods--they have tumbled off. Something is obviously wrong.

It is no consolation to say that the first can beat the second and the second the third. Ma can lick Billie and Pa can lick Ma, but that does not mean that Pa can lick Dempsey. For the past three years the crew squad has been composed of some of the best material in the east, and yet there have been no victories worth the name. Objection has, however, been quashed by the well meaning sentiment "Give them a chance." But opportunities have come and gone, and if affairs continue to take the same course there will this year be a reduplication of a situation that has become intolerable to everyone interested, and most of all to the crew men themselves.

That they do not relish continual defeat is not hard to guess; and from what the average supporter has seen of Harvard football teams he knows that on every squad there are men who understand how to win. Form may be an excellent thing but the layman has a habit of discounting it after the first three miles in favor of plain guts, and though it is not always easy to see clearly or think distinctly at New London one thing simple to grasp would be a Harvard crew crossing the finish first. There are many kinds of systems. Some are too new, others too old. There is too little of some and too much of others. But the only system that merits support is a winning system.