The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-04-06
CHANGE IN TIME WILL HELP
 ATHLETICS, SAYS SOL METzGER

and impromptu game than out of the football contest itself
 Mass athletics is the term which is used to cover all this recreation work in the army, the kind of work that organizations such as the Y. M. c. A. have been promoting for many years throughout the country in a big way and without any buster of advertis- ing. Today the Y. M. c. A. has found g. big field for this sort of work and it is meeting it-as it always has without seeking glory in the act It is service it is rendering the men of the army, quietly and with efficien- cy, as it Is doing each part of it's big task.
 What Bulletin Says
 Recent statements from New Ha- ven and Cambridge lead one to be. heve that the contemplated reforms which were to come in intercollegiate athletics at these two institutions as a result of this war are all but gone if not forgotten. Just as this column has so often predicted would be the case. Here is a sample of the views now in vogue taken from a recent issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulle- tin:'
 Intercollegiate contests are now to be resumed, before the world is at peace aagin. The coaching system. at least for spring athletics, is not materially modified, and it remains to be seen whether the proposed re- strictions will bring about all that simblification in an over-elaborate scheme of things which has been so much desired. We heartily hope it will; but unless considerable vigilance is exercised we ssupect it will not, and that before one knows it we shall have drifted back into all the old ways. Should any sign of such tendency appear in the months to come, it is much to be hoped that some entirely new system of inter- collegiate contests may be devised before any peace-time football season comes around. The plan of com bined intramural and intercollegiate games suggested already in the Bull letin might then be considered"
 So goes the world at Yale and Princeton so far as sport is concern ed, and so 1t will continue to go. One tHMg sport, college, civil or army needs stimulus and college sport will not thrive without intercollegiate competitions any more than will oth- CT sports withaut what some choose to call the hippodroming feature. And from what other source will the money come which we must have for conducting sport? Even in the army boxing, almost 8 necessity for the infantry, gets it stimulus from nu- merous bouts among the men from various organizations and from the fact that the instructors are usually pugilists or former pugilists whose names and regulations help to push it along.
 Bill CIark's Experience
 "Bill" Clark, Princetons efficient baseball coach of long standing. who went abroad in Y. M. c. Az physical work last fall, wrote from Franco that when he was in London recently he slept through a bombing raid one night though bombs were dropped on either side of the hotel he was in. Clark further says that the Y. M. c. A. is preparing athletic fields for our men in France and that everyone is looking forward to great events talk ing place this spring.
 So comprehensive is the recreation programme of the Y. M. c. A. with our forces overseas that the French government as adopted it in full and is, by request, being supplied with men from this country to take charge of the sport programme of the French army. Incidentally the French are buying footballs in way that would make our big college teams combined blush with shame.
 Copyright, 1918, by Sol Metzger)