GRADUS AD PARNASSUM

EDMUND EZRA DAY, President of Cornell and Dartmouth '05, leaned across the speakers stand on the Webster Hall platform at Dartmouth Night, before the game November 16, and said: "Let's talk for a while as man to man." The student crowd that had been bubbling and boiling with laughs and high spirits sat silent. Mr. Day ("Rufus" his Dartmouth friends call him) spoke earnestly about his apprehension in the "leveling down" attitude of the country toward anyone or anything rising above mediocrity. "There's something wrong somewhere folks say when confronted by high achievement.

Cornell has been pilloried," said Mr. Day, for having a great football team. He continued: "A man has $ 100,000. He must be a crook. He's got the money hasn't he?" The crowd of undergraduates roared. "It is becoming true," he went on, "that the only honest business man is one who fails."

Between the bursts of applause that punctuated his stirring remarks you could ear a pin drop. The distinguished leader of a great college had opened the "minds and hearts of his audience. What he said went deeper than the football situation. But game with the Big Red was just around the corner. Finally came his plea or a demonstration for the world to see of greater strength in the future collegiate reationships between "two companies of men of intelligence and good will."

Now the world has seen. Nothing of finer caliber has ever happened in the world of sport than Cornell's prompt and empharic and cordial relinquishing of victory.

EDITORIALS in the New York Times said of the Cornell action "Coach Snavely promptly telegraphed to the coach at Hanover 'with hearty congratulations to you and a gallant Dartmouth team.' If we were Cornell we shouldn't trade that telegram for all the team's victories in the past two years." .... and from the Herald Tribune "it proves that the members of this Cornell team, now defeated for the first time in almost three seasons, have gained a great deal more than any invitation to the Rose Bowl ever could mean to them."

PRESIDENT HOPKINS, following Mr. Day on the Dartmouth Night speaking program, said he appreciated the difficulties in which Cornell found itself, having such a good football team that the motives and purposes of the whole university were being questioned. "But," he said, "this may all be changed shortly! Dartmouth concedes nothing until the end of the game Saturday."

This courageous comment on a 4-1 underdog Dartmouth team was surpassed by Coach Harry Ellinger's cryptic reply to a question earlier in the week before the game. "How will the game come out?" someone asked. Harry went to the blackboard in the coaches' quarters and wrote: Dartmouth 3, Cornell o.

So MUCH HAS been written and said about the unfortunate outcome of the game in which one of the finest of referees erred, and to err is human, that the superlatively good playing of the Dartmouth team has been neglected. Study the charts in this issue. Read Whitey Fuller's account. From the opening kickoff when Wolfe nearly broke away for a touchdown the upset was in the making. Relentlessly the Green line held against everything in Red thrown against it. In a calm fury, wildly contagious in the stands, eleven men showed what men can do when the odds are against them. "You can't do it," the experts said to this team. Equipped with a new defense born in the genius of Earl Blaik and his staff, and inspired by a mighty spirit which only men can understand who have had to fight against seemingly overpowering forces, they did it.

WE HAVE WANTED in these few comments to pay tribute to the sportsmanship of President Day, Athletic Director Lynah, Coach Snavely, and all Cornell. Theirs was the most gracious recognition of defeat under unprecedented circumstances. We say, as did the Dartmouth coaches in a post-game statement, that Red Friesell is a fine referee; we call your attention to the work of Eddie Chamberlin '36 in scouting Cornell all season and helping to build a defense that tripped the mighty foe; we are proud of Louis Young's gallant team; we point to the records of the game if conviction is needed that Dartmouth played a classic game and won by virtue of being the better team on that day.

And finally we refer those who find the present-day undergraduate jaded and lacking in emotional fervor to the successive rallies after the 3-0 score was announced. During the evening the mob decided to storm a famous Hanover building. Was it the Nugget? No. "Storm the Library!" they yelled. With the band playing full blast the cheering, singing student body stormed through those spacious halls, rending the hushed and hallowed quiet with mighty roars. "Dartmouth's In Town Again."

Jaded?

Required Reference Reading in One of the Baker Library Study Halls