Charity & Hope

When proud men disagree, the best way to get them to resume relations is to unite them in a common cause which each can support without loss of dignity. Since 1927 there has been no football match between the U. S. Naval Academy and the U. S. Military Academy. Bone of contention was Navy's insistence upon the three-year rule (observed at all U. S. colleges) which requires that each player have no more than three years' college varsity football experience. Army's team has long had members who were previously outstanding on college teams. Last week it was announced that a service game would take place in Manhattan on Dec. 13, the proceeds of which (perhaps $1,000.000) will be used for the benefit of the city's unemployed.

Arranger of the game was neither Secretary of War nor Secretary of the Navy, each of whom had failed on several occasions to bring about a reconciliation between the stubborn military Mule and the hard-headed nautical Goat. The contest was first seriously proposed by long-legged Sports Editor Paul Gallico of the New York Daily News (TIME, Nov. 17). And the man who finally turned the trick was New York's official greeter and one-time police commissioner, Grover Aloysius ("Gardenia") Whalen who, having joined the Salvation Army's relief committee, tried to get Secretaries Hurley and Adams to bring about the game. When they failed, persuasive Mr. Whalen journeyed to Annapolis and West Point, somehow managed to get the superintendent of each institution to drop his grievance.

The money will be handled by the Services, not by the Salvation Army. And Army still insists that the game does not mean a resumption of athletic relations with the Navy, is merely a charitarian gesture. But soldiers and sailors alike hoped that the historic match (since 1890) will be permanently resumed.

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