From The Old School

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

As an old CRIMSON editor let me thank you for your sensible comment on the Princeton situation. I understand the Lampoon's attitude. When Princeton thrashed us in '89 or '90 we went through the same paroxysms and broke off athletic relations. Time has shown us older grads how silly and wrong it was.

Before being Harvard men we are supposed to be American gentlemen. The sporting traditions of America are inexorable on one point, one cannot quit under defeat. It's yellow. Furthermore a show of reseuiment springing from defeat is underbred and yellow.

It is not pleasant to be beaten continuously but it is a good thing for Harvard if it will awaken the undergraduate body to a realization of what is wrong there. Graduates who know the West realize that the stupid toryism which is putting New England on the toboggan industrially, for years with few and short intervals has had its dead hand on Harvard athletics. If intercollegiate sports are a good thing get the men who can teach you to win your share of contests. There is no virtue in any qualification other than the ability to win in a sportsmanlike manner.

As regards to Princeton get it straight, that it would be a calamity to break relations. Harvard, Yale and Princeton stand together with their backs against the wall as the last strongholds of east era academic tradition. There is much that is fine and worth preserving in this tradition. In many ways Princeton today is more what Harvard was thirty years ago than Harvard is to day. The same types of men go to both institutions. After graduation your friends will be largely Princeton and Yale men. Any bitterness of feeling is assinine.

The term "Big Three" from an athletic standpoint is a joke. There are twenty institutions who could thrash any one of us three times out of five. But the traditional association and common heritage of these three institutions is a real and fine thing and no silly sophomore yellowness should be allowed to undermine it. Yours very truly,   David Gray '92.