In these columns recently an article reprinted from the Harvard Crimson stated the views of Harvard and a small clique of eastern colleges regarding the action of the National Collegiate Association in withdrawing from membership on the American Olympic Committee because that organization had re-vented to its old custom of being dominated by and subservient to the A. A. U.

The Harvard editorial was reprinted because it represented the views of a big eastern university; it must be, answered because its views do not represent the attitude of universities in general.

First, Harvard's position in the intercollegiate world must be clearly understood, and it is a peculiar position that has grown up from the fact that Harvard, together with a small clique in the east that includes Yale, Princeton, Cornell and Pennsylvania, were the pioneers in intercollegiate athletics. These schools were the oldest in the country and they were the first to establish athletics on a plane in any way comparable to the present highly organized system of university sports.

But Harvard has never been willing to admit that university athletics have become national in scope, or democratic in ideals and management. Harvard still holds itself aloof from any school that will not play when and where Harvard wants to play. Harvard will play no football team except at Cambridge until its final two games at the end of the season. Except in those two games, Harvard is not interested in a home-and-home working arrangement that will be fair to other universities. You must play in Harvard's own back yard on the date Harvard names, or not play at all.

Harvard now has a basketball team, but it will not join the eastern intercollegiate league, although it does play most of the members of the league. Harvard will not join the league, for then it must play a league schedule and abide by league rules; now it can frame its own schedule as it pleases with which schools it wants to play and when it wants to play.

Harvard will not compete in the National Intercollegiate track meet because that meet is held under the rules of the National Collegiate Association, a big democratic organization of which more than a hundred universities and colleges are members. Harvard feels that its personality and powers would be limited in such an organization and that is what Harvard does not want. It will not play if it cannot dictate.

Neither will Yale play football away from home against any football team except Princeton or Harvard, nor will Yale compete in the National Intercollegiate track meet. With probably the best swimming team in the country for the last three years. Yale scorns to compete in the National Intercollegiate championship meet.

The statement from the Harvard Crimson editorial that the A. A. U. does not interfere with the independent participation of Harvard track teams with Oxford and Cambridge is amusing. Of course the A. A. U. does not stop Harvard. The reason is because Harvard is one of the four or five schools in the Bastern clique that supports the fading strength of the A. A. U. in its Czaristic attempts to control the athletics of America in its fight against the N.C.A.

But the A. A. U. has told the Y. M. C. A. that it cannot send a team to Europe to compete in the international Y. M. C. A. meet unless its contestants are registered and approved by the A. A. U. Harvard can send any men it wants to Europe, but the Y. M. C. A. cannot because the Y. M. C. A. is, with the National Collegiate Association and the Amateur Athletic Federation, one of the organizations that slights the A. A. U.

Charles Paddock was invited several years ago to compete in a meet held under the auspices of the University of Paris. The A. A. U. said no, because the University of Southern California was a member of the N. C. A. and a supporter of the National Intercollegiate meet. Had it been a Harvard athlete that was invited to the Paris University meet, the A. A. U. would not have attempted to stop him.

The Harvard Crimson has no sympathy towards the N. C. A. because that organization during the war gained enough strength to have a voice in the personnel of the football rules committee. This committee, although the game had become national in scope, was still largely an eastern organization. Harvard wanted it always to be so, for then the power of the Crimson on the committee would be great. Harvard has never wanted the middle west, the south and the far west to have equal representation with the east on the football rules committee. --Big Ten Weekly.   February, 24.