Harvard-Princeton

They say that just before the two elevens ran on the field for the Harvard-Princeton football game Bill Roper got his Princeton squad together and read them the discourteous strictures on their university in the Lampoon. This, it is supposed, is what gave the Tigers the extra allowance of fury that enabled them to trounce Harvard 12-0. We can't vouch for the accuracy of the story, or for the alleged consequences, if the story is true, but you may remember that virtually all the penalties in the game--for holding, for off-side play, etc., etc.--were imposed on Princeton.

There is no doubt in the world that college spirit counts in football. The sense of solidarity with their human background always gives men strength in combat, just as a tendency to individualism weakens them. The boy who can feel that it is his Alma Mater bucking the line, and not he, is worth more on the gridiron than his fellow of even greater strength and speed who in his subconscious represents only himself. This explains why certain institutions, often with scanty or inferior material, have the habit of turning out winning football tean's. With all due salaams to Bill Roper, it explains why Princeton has that habit.

Princeton has the thing called college spirit to a degree that is almost unmatched. This is not necessarily a compliment. College spirit needs for its strongest expression an attitude in the individual that is a little less than sophisticated; a little less than mature. He must be prepared to swallow unquestionably much that a properly developed sense of humor would reject and to adbicate emotionally and intellectually at the call of the pack. As men grow to intellectual maturity they frankly hesitate to "die for dear old Rutgers," and as colleges grow in size and complexity they attract a larger proportion of such men, whose point of view spreads down and in the course of time infects even the members of the "cheering section." This is what has been happening at Harvard for more than half a century. But Princeton, cloistered in its small town and expanding much more slowly, has never reached this stage, and now that her numbers have been pegged it is possible that she never will.

In any case, it is this fundamental difference that explains the deep-seated antagonism between the two student bodies. Harvard, conscious of a maturer point of view, regards Princeton a little patronizingly. Princeton, conscious of the strength that comes from her greater emotional solidarity, greets Harvard with the spirit of the victor. It will take a graduate engineer in Fatherly love to bridge that gulf. Judge.