Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/560

554 illustrates the value of the positive. It teaches one to do. It is action, not inaction. It bucks, it punches, it breaks, it runs, it goes, it goes through the line, it goes round the ends, but it goes. (3) Football represents the value of a compelling interest. There are other interests, good and bad, but certain temperaments need something like football to arouse them. Speaking of a lazy boy, Emerson said: 'Set a dog on him, send him West, do something to him.' Football serves such a purpose. (4) Football embodies the process of self-discovery. Every football game is a crisis. It not only creates power and develops power; it also discovers the possession or the lack of power. (5) Football develops self-restraint. Self-restraint, or more broadly, self-control, is one of the primary signs of the gentleman. Football demands self-restraint for it teems with temptations to do mean and nasty things. It thus helps to make the finest type of a gentleman.

Few college men would claim all the above, but if we grant the half, football is amply justified, and deserves general support.

It is interesting to note the favor with which athletics are received by educational leaders on all sides. I quote a paragraph from Supt. Thomas M. Balliet, one of the ablest of Massachusetts educators:

The need of systematic physical training as a part of the legitimate work of the public schools is to-day not questioned by anyone who is informed on the subject. The health and care of the body is as much the concern of the school as the training of the mind, and this fact is coming to be very widely recognized by school committees. . . . The best authorities on physical training place much less emphasis at present than formerly on formal gymnastics, and far more on free, spontaneous outdoor play as a means of physical culture.

In the interest of fairness and good breeding General Walker protests vigorously against a style of systematic cheering or yelling, which directly or indirectly tends to disconcert and impede opposing players. In this protest I cordially join. Good play should be generously recognized no matter who makes it, and neither the side lines nor the grand stand should say or do anything to embarrass or confuse visiting players. It ceases to be a manly sport when ungentlemanly tricks are resorted to. Fair play means the golden rule; treat others as you would wish to be treated in a similar situation. I do not say, as you would expect to be treated, but as you would wish to be treated. I regret that in many a community visiting clubs are treated by the spectators in such a disgraceful way that one is forced to infer that they do not know what fair play and good breeding mean.

Last spring I witnessed some athletic contests between the representatives of different educational institutions in a neighboring park. One