Academic Conflict

There is something sturdily conservative in the protest of one of Harvard's leading athletes of days gone by against the present tendency of undergraduates to take to their books. There was danger that the revolutionary idea that college was a place in which to study might actually dominate the student world. In fact, after every encounter with Yale, voices have been raised by Harvard men about the enervating effect of study on members of the team.

Writing in the Harvard Advocate, Mr. Slocum, who, besides having a reputation as an athlete has been held in such high esteem by his New York friends that he has been President of the Harvard Club of New York, makes a plea for the educational and disciplinary value of extra-curricular activities. There is much to be said on his side.

But why follow the old custom of pitting two types of activities against each other? Granted the value of athleties and of other undergraduate occupations, why pretand that these are negatived by more studying? Even Harvard graduates have been loudest in deploring the fact that the education acquired by the average American college graduate is vastly inferior to that which his European counterpart receives. The finest athletes could still survive if they managed to spend a little more time with their books. Nor would they necessarily be any less useful as leaders and citizens in after life. The New York Times