POOLING RESOURCES

A definite step in the extension of athletics at Harvard was made last year when the R. O. T. C. Unit, under the administration of Major Goetz, organized a polo team. The results were very disappointing but little could be expected with the handicap of inexperienced men and the lack of a riding hall for bad weather practice. Major Goetz made every effort to arouse interest in the construction of such a building, but it was felt that money should not be put into the enterprise until the necessity for such a structure was definitely proven, and until a general interest in polo was awakened.

Colonel Browning, who succeeds Major Goetz as head of the Military Department and who is equally enthusiastic for the enterprise, hopes to carry on the drive for a hall which will put the polo team on an equal footing with those of Yale, Princeton, and Cornell. Certainly the permanent establishment of polo at the University is a commendable object but a polo team working under the present disadvantages is wares than none. It is not easy to forget the overwhelming defeat administered the University by a small college in the first round of the intercollegiate tournament last year.

Granting that a golf course, a swimming pool and especially a new gymnasium are as much if not more to be desired than a ring for the sole use of the R. O. T. C., it nevertheless seems evident that a plan which will include two or more of these needs would be the most satisfactory.

Such a plan suggests itself in connection with the announcement of an anonymous gift to the University of a new baseball cage containing a regular diamond and complete facilities for indoor track work. The military authorities feel confident that a considerable appropriation could be, obtained from the Army, and that an even greater sum could be raised among the graduate and undergraduate supporters of polo. If such a sum were added to the anonymous gift for a baseball cage, it seems natural to suppose that a building could be constructed which would serve the purpose of the contemplated baseball cage and also of a riding hall and wet-weather football field. Incidentally the University as a whole would be spared the eventual expense of two separate buildings and the more immediate disgrace of entirely ineffective polo teams.