FOR THE COMMON GOOD

This time of the year finds the usual post season football dope in the sport columns and overflowing onto the editorial page in the form of comment. One, is offered tables showing the relative strength of different schools as Illustrated by record of their season's gains and losses. All-star elevens are passed in review. Statistics are compiled to show us just what football costs the public and profit and loss statements of the larger institutions are published. And ever present is the inevitable discussion as to the proper amount of emphasis to be placed on college sports.

To those who are ever alert for data with which to defend the present importance given to athletics in colleges and universities comes some interesting news from Michigan. The Battle Creek College, it is announced, has made use of its, football squad during the post season in the conducting of biological experiments. The men who ate at the training tables were given a diet which did not include any meat, and in place of this item of food they were given certain of the constituent elements of animal flesh in the form of chemical compounds such as food ferrin (iron) and lacto-dexterin. And since the Battle Creek College lost only two games of the season's schedule, it as conceded that the experiment was a success.

Here is excellent material for the champions of college athletics. Football need no longer be defended on the simple grounds that it provides students with a means of physical development and that it brings fame and sometimes riches to the institutions in which the game is played. It can no longer be condemned as an enemy to what is considered the central aim-of educational institutions: the pursuit of learning, and the investigations of science. It has become the aid of the ally of science. It has added to its public of the cheering section the readers of the scientific journals. And since broadening one's point of view is considered a chief function of education, football may claim the right to enter the lists of arts and sciences.