PRESENT ARMS!

Thirty-seven years ago a small legion of drenched spectators plodded up and down the sidelines at the field on the banks of the Hudson, faithfully watching a team victoriously beat back the attacks of the Army. Since that muddy October afternoon, when Percy Haughton carried his first football for Harvard, grey and golden jerseys have pounded on Crimson seventeen times. Baronchos have given way to limousines, leg-o'mutton sleeves are replaced by seal-skin capes, the rivalry continues.

The measured rhythm of 2400 polished boots falling as one announce to the Charles the most glamorous of fall contests. Buffalo, Yale, Holy Cross, Dartmouth, all can furnish but dull counter-parts of Harvard, like Harvard preparing grubbing, grubbing, grubbing students with the elements of an education with which to fashion life. But with the Cadets comes a romance more real, more vital, than the round of artificial pleasures offered by the Somerset, Beacon Hill, and the Brattles. The trim uniforms, the electric response to crisp commands, the venerable joke about the mule, these combine to give a sense of purpose, a promise of a definite future, which makes the academic student, preparing himself for a dim and uncertain path, wonder.

And then there is the witchery which the polished buttons, the gold braid, the snug capes, cast over even the most surfeited debutante; fortunately those crisp commands prevent a military encounter under the chandeliers of the Copley. Last there is the rumor, the vague suspicion, that the librettist who conceived "In the Army there's sobriety, promotion's very slow," was nearly half right.

For today, banal thoughts of commercialism make graceless retreat before a tide of grey and gold. For thirty-seven years West Point has met Harvard, smartly, proudly, cleanly even in the days of flying wedges and greased uniforms. It is but a tithe of the time that John Harvard's spirit has hovered over the Yard, but it is long enough to prove that Harvard continues to enjoy the rivalry of officers and gentlemen.