and proper under the circumstances the result showed.  There were actually seven casualties among twenty-two men who began the game.  This is nearly 33 per cent. of the combatants—­a larger proportion than among the Federals at Cold Harbor (the bloodiest battle of modern times), and much larger than at Waterloo or at Gravelotte.  What has American culture and civilisation to say to this mode of training youth?  “Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off the field crying with mortification.”  Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone.  Beard was next turned over to the doctors.  Hallowell had his nose broken.  Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field on a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain.  Butterworth, who is said nearly to have lost an eye, soon followed.  Add that there was a great deal of “slugging”—­that is, striking with the fist and kicking—­which was not punished by the umpires, though two men were ruled out for it.

* * * * *

It may be laid down as a sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth.  Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education.  The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed.  The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad passions, and drown their sense of fairness.  When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, and in full view of the stretchers which carry their fellows from the field, for aught they know disabled for life, how, in the name of common sense, does it differ in moral influence from the Roman arena?

Now, the point in the above notice is that it is written of “gentlemen”—­of university men.  It is to be feared that very similar charges might be brought against some of the professionals of our association teams:  but our amateurs are practically exempt from any such accusation.  The climax of the whole thing is the statement by a professor of a well-known university, that a captain of one of the great football teams declared in a class prayer-meeting “that the great success of the team the previous season was in his opinion due to the fact that among the team and substitutes there were so many praying men.”  The true friends of sport in the United States must wish that the football mania may soon disappear in its present form; and the Harvard authorities are to be warmly congratulated on the manly stand they have taken against the evil.  And it is to be devoutly hoped that no president of a college in the future will ever, as one did in 1894, congratulate his students on the fact “that their progress and success in study during the term just finished had been fully equal to their success in intercollegiate athletics and football!".[15]