Into Blue Obscurity

When Frank Merriwell was at Yale, things were different. Unhampered by single wingback formations, looping defenses, scouting reports, and five-man lines, the Eli marvel just appeared on the field the day of the Harvard battle, with al loyal band of unpracticed players who were undismayed by a huge, fearful Crimson foe, and snatched victory from defeat with a daring last-second dash in a duel of flying wedges. Merriwell did not have to think about a war, or the fact that Harvard was playing its most honored and blasphemed rival for the last time for the duration. Back in those days, it was easy. You just played football, and Adolf Hitler was busy hanging paper. And 60,000 people packed Yale Bowl, hysterical in their partisanship.

That is why this year's Harvard-Yale classic may not seem, to the sparse gathering at the Bowl tomorrow, as spectacular or all-important an event as it has in the past. Whether Howie Odell, one-time pupil of Dick Harlow, can teach his former mentor a few tricks or not pales before the thought of what will be done by these same Crimson and Eli athletes a few months hence.

Nevertheless, the effects of a Harvard victory over Yale in the last encounter of the two colleges before Victory is not inconsiderable. To thousands of Crimson alumni in all quarters of the fighting world there would come a feeling of contentment. They could think back on their college days and smile at three consecutive victories over their ancient rival; they could have a whole artillery of quips to fling at Yale men in their battalions. Football, that felic of an unharnessed past, would be a pleasant memory. And even Frank Merriwell, for whom God, country, and Yale were synonymous, might have a few uneasy moments in his literary grave.