POSITION OF MINOR ATHLETICS.

"Yet, just recently Harvard officially abandoned basketball and swimming, because they did not pay their way; and at Yale they are hanging in the balance for the same reason. This seems a disregard of the very essence of undergraduate athletics that is no less than amazing retrogression."

The foregoing statement by Mr. Caspar Whitney appeared in the current issue of Collier's Weekly under the head of "The Sportman's View-Point." The essence of the paragraphs devoted to Harvard is that basketball and swimming were given up because they did not pay, and that "minor sports" here are being discouraged. Both of these assertions simply denote total unfamiliarity with the situation.

The reason for discontinuing the two sports named was not because they were too heavy an expense, but because interest in them had so flagged, as a result of inadequate facilities, that they were no longer representative or useful. The report of the athletic finances shows that all the minor sports are run at a loss, and that the amount of money expended on them has been increased recently rather than cut down.

As to the "amazing retrogression," statistics show that the number of men engaged in minor athletics has increased materially during the last five years. The number participating in what are known as the "minor sports," including basketball and swimming five years ago and without them today, are practically equivalent, which means that the hundred or so men who were engaged in these sports before are now taking their exercise in some out-of-door form. In addition to this change there is an increase of over one hundred in the number of those playing scrub baseball and engaged in wrestling. We wonder how these figures can be construed into showing "a disregard of the very essence of undergraduate athletics."