Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/46

 because he fights alone. "I don't want anyone to help me out," I heard an undergraduate say not long ago. "If I get anything or anywhere I want to do it by my own efforts and upon my own merits." But no one is likely to get very far alone, and more and more we are coming to recognize the fact that it is team work that counts. Even the self-made man is not so much in vogue as he once was, because we see what a crude, freakish, incomplete product he often is. It is better to employ organization and "piece work" in turning out a successful man. The fact that a fraternity man is allied with a group of other men who are working for approximately the same thing as he is working for, who are in sympathy with him, who are willing to help him and advise him, does usually give him an advantage over other men. His condition reminds me somewhat of an experience which I had yesterday. I attended a baseball game between our home team and that of a nearby state university. The odds were pretty even, if I may be permitted to use so paradoxical an expression, and more than once our pitcher seemed in a rather tight corner. At each instance of this sort there always came from all sides of the bleachers the encouraging cry "We're all behind you, Red," and I have no doubt it was that friendly fraternal word that helped "Red" to pull himself success-