Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/191

Popular Education afforded to be more convincingly moderate. There is no real use in saying that it is play which makes the world go round, because we know it isn't. If it were, the world of the savage would go round as efficaciously as the world of the civilized man. When Mr. Lee tells us that the little boy who plays baseball "follows the ball each day further into the unexplored regions of potential character, and comes back each evening a larger moral being than he set forth," we merely catch our breath, and read on. We have known so many boys, and we are disillusioned. When Mr. Curtis points out to us that English school-boys play more and play better than any other lads, and that their teachers advocate and encourage the love of sport because it breeds "good common sense, and resourcefulness which will enable them to meet the difficulties of life," we ask ourselves doubtfully whether Englishmen do meet life's difficulties with an intelligence so keen 175