Seventy-Five Years Ago

(The following editorial appeared in the Crimson on November 13, 1897, the day of the Harvard-Yale game. The 1897 game was the first the two teams had played since 1894, when a disagreement led to a discontinuation of the series.)

In behalf of Harvard University, we wish to welcome Yale to Cambridge. She has been Harvard's honored and worthy opponent through the whole history of intercollegiate athletics until the late interruption. The circumstances of that interruption have already been dropped from consideration by all concerned. They are shelved once and for all, and we feel confident that it will be many a long day before another disagreement may separate Harvard and Yale. May it never occur.

The Harvard football team will appear on the field today representing as seldom before a united University spirit too deep to find adequate expression. The college has made up its mind that the string of past defeats shall not be added to while there is anything left that skill and muscle, and, above all, determination can accomplish. The whole machinery of college life pauses today to hang upon the result of this game, and start up with infinitely increased vitality if stimulated to victory. Harvard's defeats have by their very frequency brought in late years a string of humiliation, but they are not inevitable misfortunes decreed by fate. The tide can be turned today, and Harvard looks to Captain Cabot and his men to do it.

Never did a football team have a better chance. Individually the men have the experience. They have the physique. They have had the benefit of consistent well-planned coaching, and they play on the home grounds in the presence of the men they represent, who are with them heart and soul.

One more quality, in addition, they posseses--the power to do their best when it is called for. A team comes to Cambridge, one whose chief merits is that "it will never quit." It has well earned that reputation, but it will take more than "send" to win today for Yale. Every man on the Harvard team knows what is expected of him this afternoon. He will go on to Soldiers' Field to play to the bitter and faster, better football than he ever played before. Harvard intends to win, and she will not fall for lack of pluck.