are not as beneficial to us as they might be. The American child is not the Swedish child and can not be similarly treated, if the best results are to be secured.

My reasons for advocating such a system are briefly:

1 That it can be done at once, as it involves no great outlay at first, and increased facilities can be given when its success is demonstrated.

2 That I believe that thorough work in all the grades can be done in this way.

I wish that a commissioner of physical education could be appointed for the nation. Could not such an institution as the University of the State of New York employ a competent man to forward the interests of this subject in the educational institutions of the state? Would it be possible, and if possible, desirable, for the state legislature to render physical education compulsory in all the public schools of the state? Physical education has vitally to do with the mental and moral life of the nation. Few truths are more clearly taught by history than that the physical condition of the people determines the fate of the nation.

The growth of the cities, with the consequent city life, the general use of machinery, medical science keeping alive the weak, the increasing intensity of life, all combine to make natural physical exercise more wanting and artificial exercise more necessary.

ATHLETICS AT YALE

Charles F. Kent, Palmyra, N. Y.-I take it for granted that all of you here are familiar, if you read the newspapers, with the result of our athletics. I propose to give an idea of how the teams are turned out at Yale.

The dearest part of our athletics is the crew. A Yale man feels proud of the crew, but let us go back and see why this is so. Before Christmas the fellows that are going to try for the crew begin by taking long runs, generally the captain starts out with a run of 12 miles. After the Christmas vacation the real work begins. Down at the bottom of our gymnasium we have a tank filled with water, and there for two long months the men pull the oars in the dingy old hole, till at last the ice breaks on the harbor and the men are able to go out and work their way and try their oars on free water. Sometimes they are capsized to be sure, and you might think they would catch cold and wear themselves ont, but that is not so; a little run and a little exercise, and it is all over. All this time they keep

up their running. It means two hours every day of solid, hard work, and in addition to this not only are the muscles trained but the digestion is trained. During this training the men are not allowed to take anything intoxicating, nor use tobacco. No water is to be taken between meals. This goes on till the grand races at New

London come.

Much the same process do the men for the football team go through. In the fall you will find a man kicking a ball till he is out of his head, and when the time comes he is among the 50 or 60 you will find on the field.

Then comes baseball. That training begins in the winter, in the cages, as we call them. There the men slide bases, throwing themselves without any regard for their limbs. There they pitch and bat the ball, and there they get their muscles in trim by that exercise and by running until the weather comes when they can get outside. These are our three great departments of athletics.

Then there is cricket, intercollegiate games, the track, etc., all that does not come under the three general heads. Then we ought to make mention of the work done on the class crews. They are composed of men representing the classes, who are trained hard till the middle of May when they have their class races. This department includes many men. The question now arises how many men. are actively engaged working for these nines. We need 60 men to man all of our teams, and I should say about the same number for our class teams, making an aggregate of 150 men that are engaged in some of the departments. In addition I should say that it has been computed five men try, to every one man who gets on the different teams, that which means that there are 750 men trying for these places where 150 get on.

Cricket is a recent department of our athletics and calls for a large part of our athletic energy. Tennis includes almost all the rest of the men left in the university. And then we have our incidental clubs, hare and hound clubs that take long runs, sometimes eight or 10 or 12 miles. Our Yale athletics are not confined to any limited class of men.

Now the question arises, what is the result of all this work? In the first place we see physical development. To be a man you must have a physique back of you, It develops the spirit of a man to attain that physical development. Yale athletics have raised the standard at Yale as no other factor that we can conceive of. Our faculty hand over our athletics to us. When we want to do anything

we do not call upon the faculty, we call a meeting of the fellows and we discuss it and decide it.

Another result, right along the line in which Dr Hitchcock and Dr Gulick have been speaking, and that is the effect this athletic training has on the men in their mental work. A man that has been through the drill of rowing has control of himself and has learned what concentration means. In other words, he has learned that the time put in properly in one hour is made to accomplish as much as it otherwise does in two.

COLLEGE ATHLETICS

Pres. H. E. Webster- My friend, Secretary Dewey, in writing to me asking me to take part in this discussion did me the honor to say that I would be likely to say something that would raise discussion. How in the name of common sense the man came to think that of me is more than I can understand, because I never have anything to do with discussions. I always agree with everybody, unless he is entirely wrong.

Those of my age will remember when the faculty of a college did not trouble itself at all about athletics. We used to have occasional athletics, I remember, in the rooms round about the college building, and sometimes the faculty did trouble itself about that; but as to a system of athletics, they did not disturb themselves about it in any

way.

Everybody will agree that there ought to be some sort of athletic training in colleges for the students, and I presume it will be generally agreed that this ought to be compulsory, because very many men really need the training more than others, inasmuch as they know that they can not by any possibility excel, and others because of their nervous condition hold back from this training. Yet there are other men who need to be restrained. There needs to be some competent, careful authority who will give heed to these questions. In the university many of us have come to think that there is no need of any such care or any such authority in regard to athletic matters, the function of the instructors there being simply to help a mar after he has made up his mind what he will do; but in athletis flere are men who need to be urged to practice and others who reed to be restrained.

There are a great many difficult questions that come in. How ng onght this to be compulsory! For one year, or two, or four? I can not answer that question. I simply propose it for other peo

ple to answer. How many hours a week ought to be used for this purpose? Ought it to be an hour a day for six days, or half an hour a day for four days? I do not understand that very well. I want information and I think we shall get information rapidly this after

noon.

As to the relative importance of athletics and athletic training in colleges, I think there can be no doubt that athletics are more important. It seems to me from reading the press that if a man who knew nothing about the colleges of the United States should try to find out what the object of a college was, he could come to only one conclusion; that incidentally there was more or less study, but that the regular business was athletics. I may be wrong, but I think that would be the conclusion he would arrive at. I think it is easier to get money for athletics than for anything else. If you need books for your library you find more trouble in getting the means than for a football eleven or a baseball nine.

As to the real, true inwardness of athletics as a missionary enterprise, as something which may be regarded as an element in the moral reformation, I have never given the matter enough attention to know; but I do know that if it be so I heartily rejoice, because it has come to be understood in many of our institutions that we have nothing whatever to do with the moral character of the men. It seems to be understood that a young man who goes to college is to be allowed to develop along his own lines, and that anybody who interferes is impertinent. I myself believe in morals and I believe in the Christian religion, and I believe in both of them being taught in college. If therefore athletic training will come in to help us, every good man should rejoice.

There is another thing in my mind which has given me a great deal of trouble and that is intercollegiate athletics. A young man goes to college and is supposed to follow the curriculum. He is supposed to be in college and at his work. The faculty allow him to be absent one or two weeks in a term visiting round, getting general information, I suppose. Suppose that man fails in his work. Of course I know the better a man can play football the better he can recite psychology, but still there may be cases where it will not be true. Now what am I going to say to the father of this young man, to whom I have written, "We do not want your son in college because he has not done his work." He writes back, "What business had you to let him be away from college for a week or two at such a time?" I had no business, but what am I going to say to

him? I will say what I have made up my mind to do, I do not propose to let a man leave the college grounds on any intercollegiate business whatever, whose college standing is going to be affected by his absence. I would like to say to the colleges of this state, those of them who do not feel so fully committed to this matter that there is no going forward or backward, that I am very doubtful about the whole thing. It has grown on us so, little by little, that it has come to be a very large thing indeed. When we were boys we had no athletic training, unless walking five miles before school to a trout brook might be counted athletic training, but we used to go out and play ball, and pretty much everybody played ball. Now what has happened? If we missed a ball nobody died, but if a man misses a ball to-day it is far more serious than failing in a recitation. I venture to say that there is not a college in the country that has not a baseball nine or a football team, and where the best man in the nine or team does not hold a better place in the college than the best student in it who is not an athlete. I do not wish to be understood as against regular athletic training in college. My experience is wholly in favor of it, but I would say that while the results have been excellent, it requires the most careful consideration. There must be a man in charge of this business who has not only the knowledge, but who can give himself wholly to this work.

There are practical difficulties in many of our colleges in the way of carrying out a carefully prepared or extended scheme of athletics. In a college for example where there are no dormitories, where the pupils live within two or three miles of the college, I can see that there would be great difficulty in organizing a regular scheme of athletics. You can require it if you see fit to, but there are often many grave difficulties in carrying it out.

There is another difficulty which comes in which I have never heard mentioned. A great many new subjects have been added to our college curriculum within the last 25 years and there is a feeling that the college course is too long now. Yet we are called on to add something else which will take at least an hour a day, and at the same time to shorten the course. Every man who has been engaged in teaching for the past 25 years knows that the pressure has been very great indeed in the addition of new subjects, so that it really seems if we were barely skimming the surface of a number of things instead of doing sound work on a smaller number of things.

The student wants a good physique so that he can have as much