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Off The Cuff

Quia me vestiga terrent, Omnia te adversum spectantia, nulla retrorsum. That's what Horace said, and it means "It frightens me to see all the footprints directed towards thy den, and none returning." Now it turns out that Horace didn't say these words at Cornell Saturday afternoon; on top of that, he never went to Harvard. But gentlemen, let us grant that Horace thinks and writes as if he were educated, along with the rest of us, in the Harvard Stadium, with time out for an occasional field trip to places such as Charlottesville or Ithaca.

And do end the last gentle, kindly, soft-hearted words you will read about Harvard football in this column. Dave Egan, the Boston Record's amiable columnist will soon be finished with his friendly comments on the Boston Braves. He will then trot out his usual affection for the Harvard football eleven, and the Harvard Director of Athletics, whom he gracefully calls Bill "Blooding Heart" Bingham. So you can read Egan for your soft-soaping. This column will remain level-headed and realistic.

Take the Army game. Last fall, when Egan was in South Bend watching Army play Notre Dame, he wrote a column about the excellence of the Cadets, even though they were mashed up, and paused in the middle to say "I have just received the awful intelligence that Harvard will play Army next year." Let us not sink, along with Egan, into the depths of despair. Let us be unemotional, and remember that "to hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates . . . this is alone Life, Joy, Empire, Victory!" That's what Shelley said; translated it means that when you have an offensive team that's "up," anything ought to happen.

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