The Yale Fence

Once again athletic relations between Harvard and Princeton have come up for discussion in the editorial pages of the Princetonian and the CRIMSON. This discussion is now a hardy perennial, blossoming forth with unfalling regularity at least once a year. While it is undoubtedly true that the regular expression of opinion is helpful in determining the status of the problem each year and in paying the way for an ultimate reconciliation, nevertheless the continued postponement of that reconciliation becomes more and more tiresome as time goes on. It is an issue in which the Yale undergraduate body is concerned only indirectly, but certainly those who have given thought to the problem are aware that when two leading institutions in the country are at outs with one another over the simple matter of a football game, the situation has its humorous aspects.

In the present discussion, both the CRIMSON and the Princetonian agree that the football breach should not be allowed to interfere with the schedule of matches in other sports. The CRIMSON expresses it thus: "When there is no possibility of mending the football breach for a number of years at least. It is a narrow principle that will not admit a full program of sports to be more important that a game of football. The Princetonian states editorially: "...there appears no compelling reason, from the undergraduate viewpoint, for continuing a wholesale sacrifice of all sports to a dispute that began over one." There is sound good sense to both of these statements, and nobody but a foot would disagree.

Repeatedly in the past, the News has expressed the hope that Harvard and Princeton would bury the hatchet and resume football relationships. The CRIMSON, for one, refers to the breach as having been "unpleasantly made and foolishly maintained." We feel that reconciliation should come before the breach has time to become traditional and therefore irreparable. But it looks as though the issue will drag on for a number of years, gradually becoming more and more of a joke. There might even be benefit in that, because someday it will become so absurd that the continued estrangement of the two institutions in foot ball will be impossible. Yale Daily News