Part 2
David Starr Jordan has said many times that “the football field is a more wholesome place for a young man than the ballroom,” and those who know the facts endorse his claim. The young fellow gets hurt now and then in football, but taking into consideration the part of him which suffers and the after effects of it, we commonly find that the injury is less damaging than are the hurts received in indoor, fashionable dissipation. Athletics bring men out under God’s open sky, into the fresh air, and under the stimulus of healthy rivalries. They train men to see clearly, to hear accurately the first time, to decide quickly, to move instantly, and to stand together in a genuinely social spirit. These qualities have high place in the combination of talents which makes for success; they have high place as well in the formation of sound character.
But to tackle the subject more closely let me name several ways in which athletics worthy of an educational institution are particularly beneficial. They serve as an outlet for the surplus physical energy of boys and young men. In simply walking to school, even though he carries some girl’s books as well as his own, the healthy young man does not consume in twenty-four hours all the physical energy he manufactures. Throbbing within him there is an exuberant physical life, excitable and not yet under firm control. There is the consciousness of new and untried powers in regard to which he feels deep concern. There is the push of impulse not fully regulated by conscience or experience. Unless there is some wholesome outlet he will burst the levee, devastating whole fields of his own nature and of other natures besides, by an unwholesome use of that surplus physical energy.
Training for athletic events means early hours, clean habits, constant occupation of mind and body, for in any college worthy of the name the young man must be a student all the while, as well as a quarterback or a pitcher. The training, therefore, becomes a mighty safeguard thrown around a lot of young fellows who are face to face with the devil of temptation. Even for those who do not make the team or the nine or the track, if they are taking regular gymnasium work in hope of that success next year, or if in other ways they have caught the spirit of clean, honest, joyous sport, athletics give an added motive and a stronger impulse toward clean living.
“Wild oats,” as they are lightly called, produce a sorry and a debasing harvest. No man with sense enough to be allowed to run at large ever looks himself in the face and takes satisfaction in the memory of such sowing. The fellow who thinks he is not wise or experienced until he has become familiar with the haunts of gamblers and harlots, until he has the smut and smell of those associations upon him, is regarded by saner men as green, oh, so green! He sometimes calls his escapades “seeing life,” but it is not life he sees there; it is death--and a foul, rotten, ill-smelling type of death. The trainer will not tolerate it. The man himself would be regarded as a traitor to the university if on the team he “broke training” for such indulgence. And the whole spirit of wholesome athletics is such as to stamp that course as base and mean. As an outlet for surplus energy then and as a safeguard against certain forms of wrong-doing, wholesome athletics in college life hold a place of honor.
They furnish also a means of joyous recreation. The mind bent and strained all the time with serious employment loses its spring, if not sometimes its sanity. The relaxation of honest fun, the excitement of a sport where one measures his strength and skill against that of others, the self-forgetfulness which comes with absorption in something other than one’s work--all these are imperatively demanded for the normal development of youth into maturity. We would all bring up in the madhouse or the sanitarium, if we did not now and then have some such diversion!
This demand for recreation, if no intelligent and wholesome forms of expression are at hand, crops out in those college pranks which sometimes border on lawlessness. The spontaneous fun of college life is ever enjoyed and applauded. There was a Yale man once suspended for this excusable caper. The students were required to attend service on Sunday in the chapel where the preacher was sometimes dull and tiresome. One particular offender against the youthful demand for vitality and brevity used to divide his sermons into heads and subheads almost endlessly, Roman 1, Arabic 1. One in brackets, a, b, c, etc., etc. This friend of mine arranged to have his class of one hundred and sixty men sit together well up in front, and every time the preacher passed from one head to another, they uncrossed their legs in unison and crossed them over the other way. When the reverend doctor passed from one in brackets to two, or from a to b, he saw one hundred and sixty pairs of legs taken apart and recrossed simultaneously. When this had been done six or eight times the people in the adjacent section and in the galleries became more interested in watching this mighty movement of legs than in the sermon, and the minister himself was so disconcerted that he presently gave it up and closed the service with the sermon unfinished. The dull preacher might better have put more life into his sermon, thus affording some legitimate opportunity for the exercise of interest on the part of his hearers.
Athletics bring wholesome recreation not only to those who play on the eleven or the nine, or who appear on the track, but to that larger company of fellows who strive for that honor; to a multitude whose interest in exercise and outdoor sport is quickened though they never aspire to ’varsity positions; to the thousands of spectators who assemble to witness the game and cheer the winners. The physical quickening, the mental relaxation, the temporary forgetfulness of hard work, the joyous hours in the open air, are all good for the whole company of people who thus, directly and indirectly, share in the advantages of athletics. Keep the game free from the taint of professionalism, free from betting, free from the disposition that would win fairly if possible, but win at any cost, and we have a form of recreation distinctly beneficial to the whole community!
The discipline of athletics develops obedience, self-control, and the spirit of cooperation, all of them useful, moral qualities. Many a rich man’s son, ambitious for college honors, has gotten his first taste of real discipline on the athletic field. At home he had indulgent parents--they were self-indulgent because of their wealth and they scarcely knew how to be other than indulgent to their children. The boy was waited upon by well-paid servants eager to do his bidding and humor his whims. His generous tips greased the way for him when he traveled or went in pursuit of pleasure. He had never felt the rough, raw edge of an exacting discipline.
But when the trainer took him in hand this son of affluence was treated as though he had been working his way through college by currying some man’s horse or by waiting on the table at a boarding club. If he played football he was knocked down as promptly and as hard, when he got in the way of a bigger and better player, as if his father had been a hod-carrier. And all this is exactly as it should be! Sometime, somewhere, he should learn the democratic spirit by being compelled to meet his fellow men without favor shown or advantage given; he should learn how to take the hard knocks and keep sweet, not losing his head or his temper. The boys say, “If a fellow plays football it does not take long to find out what kind of a fellow he is.” The real quality of the man comes out more readily and more genuinely perhaps than it would in a college prayer-meeting. And the man himself finds out what kind of a fellow he is, to his own lasting advantage.
Wellington used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the athletic fields of the English schools. He meant that when he found himself standing up against Napoleon’s fiercest attacks, he had under him a body of men who had not waited for their army experience to learn discipline. Obedience, self-control, and the necessity of standing together had all been learned long ago at Rugby and Eton and Harrow until these qualities were bred in the bone! Now as mature men they fought the great battle through to a finish just as they used to put the pigskin across their opponent’s goal in the years gone by.
To gain this benefit in any worthy measure there must be a genuine participation in the athletic life of the institution. Some students imagine that they are greatly interested in athletics because they talk about the various events, smoke countless cigarettes on the bleachers, gossip endlessly in the fraternity house as to how the game was lost or won, taking up the time of the players with their useless prattle. All this, however, is as much like real interest in athletics as a bandbox is like a granite block. The interest to be worthy of the name and to insure any actual benefit must be a genuine interest.
There is something admirable in the attitude of those men who try for the team or the nine, and having failed, show themselves glad to play on the second eleven or nine. “Scrub teams” they are sometimes ignominiously and erroneously called--their loyalty and devotion to the institution is often such that they might be called “Sequoia teams.” Their spirit of sacrifice is such that they are willing to stand out as only second best and to be practised on by better men to the end that those better men may gain still more honor and glory for themselves. This spirit of loyalty and good will serves to exalt the part they take into a genuine culture in character.
The spirit of cooperation is strengthened by college athletics. Men are knit together by close ties when they participate in training or in the game. They learn to rely upon each other. Conceit and selfish pride are eliminated until the whole nature is in a fair way to be genuinely socialized. The man learns that he cannot catch and pitch and play left field all at once. He must fill his own place and act with other men who are filling their places. He must take his color in the pattern and join his yarn to their yarn in a genuine spirit of fraternal cooperation. He must subordinate his own personal interest or advantage to the larger interests of the institution which he represents. If he has really entered into the spirit of the best college athletics, he will forever after be a better husband and father, a better neighbor and citizen, a better man in the world of industry, and a better churchman, for his systematic training in this spirit of cooperation.
Athletics also express and develop what we call “college spirit.” This sense of joy in one’s own college, the generous pride and enthusiasm over victories won by other students, the knitting together of the student body in paying the necessary dues, in cheering the games, in helping to maintain high and honest standards, all go to make up that “college spirit.”
This bit of sentiment over one’s own institution does not pay term bills or prepare lessons or write examination papers, but it aids in the doing of every one of these things. The fife and drum in the army do not throw up breastworks or fire off guns to disable the enemy, but they do aid in the general undertaking by the enthusiasm and _esprit de corps_ they help to arouse. That college spirit, which is indeed a useful educational force, is always heightened by wholesome athletics. That splendid hit when there were three men on the bases; that break through the line or around the end and the run down the field; that last spurt at the end of the hundred-yard dash, with a whole horizon of students and other spectators rending the skies with their enthusiastic cheers, all aid in the development of a wholesome enthusiasm over one’s own college.
The student who holds himself apart from it all in blasé fashion, affecting to look with cool contempt on the joyous fervor of his fellows is either diseased or else his show of indifference is only skin deep. The sneering, flippant, cynical young person is as much of a freak as would be a ten-year-old boy bald-headed, with a long white beard. Intensity, enthusiasm, absorption, belong to college life and they work their good results in transforming youth into manhood.
The two main evils, aside from the common evils of betting and dissipation which are not confined to athletes, to be guarded against are the spirit of professionalism and the habit of unfairness. The smuggling in of a professional baseball or football player whose college standing is maintained by snap courses or by indulgent professors, is a thing despicable in the eyes of all right-minded college men. It is the sacrifice of the university idea to the demand for victory in college sports. And in similar fashion the disposition to win by fair means or by foul, which has sometimes disfigured our college athletics, lies at the root of the ugly distrust felt by institutions for each other on the athletic field. Better no victories than victories of dishonor! The word of the old professor is always in point: “Play your games as gentlemen, fair, true, and generous. Win your games as gentlemen when you can, with no offensive conceit over your success. Lose your games as gentlemen when you must, with no whimpering or silly excuses.”
It is of vital importance that the whole interest of college athletics be held firmly within the grasp of that larger purpose already indicated. The main business of life is not to play baseball or football, but to do certain things treated more directly in other departments of college life. You cannot afford to play any game at the expense of your highest development as one preparing to do his full share of the world’s work. Strive to make your life rich in meaning, full of the power to serve, fine and true in its inner quality, and that fundamental purpose will so dominate your interest in athletics as to render your bodily exercise profitable both for the life that now is and for that larger life that lies ahead.
III
THE FRATERNITY QUESTION
The sentiment of love between persons of the opposite sex has monopolized the popular interest, while other fine forms of human relationship have failed of their due recognition. The feeling of friendship between persons of the same sex has a profound significance. The friendship of Damon and Pythias and that of David and Jonathan have been sung by the poets and the memory of them perpetuated in the rituals of well known fraternal orders in such a way as to make them classic.
It is good for us to know and to love those with whom the question of sex, with its mysterious attractions and repulsions, does not enter in. The woman who cares little for other women, who is only happy when she is talking with men, or the man who is so much of a “ladies’ man” as to be ill at ease when thrown for an hour exclusively with men, is mentally, if not morally, diseased. It is good for the souls of men to be knit with the souls of their fellows; it is fitting that women should know and enjoy other women.
It is the need for that association which lies at the root of the almost countless fraternities found in all our cities. In searching out names and mysterious forms for them all, men have gone clear over the border into what is both fantastic and foolish. The secrecy of these societies is not to be taken too seriously--as a rule it is mere dust thrown in the eyes of the uninitiated. The members laugh in their sleeves knowing how little the “secrets” amount to, but the organizations offer opportunity for social fellowship in a way to satisfy a wide-spread desire.
The same tendency, with some additional leaning to clannishness and to the love of mystery found in most young people, is evidenced by the Greek letter fraternities in the colleges and in many of the high schools. These have been in operation for more than a quarter of a century and they have not yet by any means so justified their existence as to win the cordial support of the best educational authorities. There is still “the fraternity question,” with a big interrogation point after it, put there by parents, teachers, and citizens, and by many of the young people themselves as they grow wiser.
I speak of this matter as a fraternity man. I have been initiated; I have worn a “pin,” at such odd times as my “best girl” did not happen to be wearing it. I know the mysterious significance attaching to the “grip” when one student meets another and taking him by the little finger pulls it surreptitiously nine times to the left. I have been through all this, for I am a member of Alpha Eta of Sigma Chi. What I say, therefore, is not spoken in that prejudice which sometimes attaches to the utterances of the “anti-frat” man who sees it all from the outside and comes up hot, perhaps, from some hard-fought campaign where the line was closely drawn between “frats” and “anti-frats.”
I speak also with a deep sense of the importance of the question. The principal of the high school in my own city, which has an enrolment of twelve hundred pupils, said to me recently when I had been asked to speak on fraternities, “You have a big subject on your hands.” He spoke as an educator watching the lives of that large company of young people five days in the week. I speak as a pastor and a teacher of spiritual values and I agree with him that it is “a big subject.”
The power of intimate association for good or ill--no nation under heaven, Christian or pagan, has failed to condense its observation and experience on that point into some terse proverb. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed,” said the old Hebrew. “Evil company doth corrupt good manners,” said the Greek, and Paul quoted it in his letter to the Greek Christians at Corinth. “Talent is perfected in solitude, but character is formed in the stream of the world,” is the German of it. “Live with wolves and you will learn to howl,” the Spanish proverb has it; and in homely Holland fashion, the Dutch proverb is, “Lie down with dogs and you will get up with fleas.” In these terse sayings, elegant and inelegant, the race has recorded its judgment as to the power of association. The fraternity promotes certain forms of most intimate association at a crucial period and thus enters powerfully for good or ill into the lives of young people.
There are certain credits to be entered in making up a trial balance for the fraternity. It marks out a definite group of special friends for closer association. One cannot become intimately acquainted with the whole human race or even with as much of it as happens to be present in a large high school or college. Whether it is done in organized or in unorganized ways, there must come a process of selection by which one’s social interests are kept to a manageable size.
The fraternity gives opportunity for learning to subordinate the purely personal and selfish interests to the larger good. The fraternity man has in view something beyond his own individual pleasure or success. He is taught to aid some fraternity brother who has good prospects, in athletics, in a race for some class honor, or in debate. Mutual admiration, a common enthusiasm, a corporate ambition and the spirit of cooperation, are thus developed in the whole group by a feeling of common interest.
The fraternity brings the lower class man into closer touch with upper class men. The first year man is not a mere unbaked freshman to the juniors and seniors in his fraternity. They have an interest in him, a responsibility for him, because of his fraternity connection. These organizations thus cause the line of social cleavage to run perpendicularly as well as horizontally. My own life will be forever different by reason of the friendship of two upper class men in my university days. Such friendships are wholesome for both the younger and the older men.
The fraternity serves as a convenient basis for fellowship when a man visits another college or when alumni return to their alma mater. The house of one’s own fraternity is open to him, and affords opportunity for him to come into touch with the eager, throbbing life about him. The alumni of a chapter may also exert a real influence for good upon the resident members of the fraternity, because of this continued association.
The fraternity house offers a useful center for returning social courtesies. The students, in their class-day spreads and at other times, may thus indicate their appreciation of social attentions received from townspeople.
All this can be said and said heartily. It may seem that I am making out such a strong case for the fraternities that any criticism offered later will be of no avail. It would be unfair, however, not to state the advantages as strongly as one’s own judgment would approve.
But there are certain offsets in fraternity life which must come up for an equally frank and thorough consideration. There is a constant tendency in any fraternity house to spend more time and more money than many a student can afford. No fellow of spirit can allow others to treat him, take him to the theater, show him all manner of attentions without feeling an obligation resting upon him to return these courtesies. A few men in a fraternity with rich fathers, large allowances, and warm hearts, can, with no sort of wrong intent, set the pace in such a way as to demoralize a whole group of young men. The man of modest means and simple habits, dependent upon a hard-working father for his education and for all the comforts of his home life, is apparently forced into a gait which it is wrong for him to take. He does not intend to be mean or cruel, but he adopts a scale of expenditure which he cannot afford; he runs into debt; he becomes unjust to his parents, who are making sacrifices for his education. It requires more grit than nine out of ten young fellows of the high school or college age possess, to stand up and oppose the course of action which leads to these ill-advised “good times.”
It is to be regretted that simplicity is so overborne in all our social life by the elaborate and the expensive. Business men, husbands, and fathers, are being killed off, before their time, by nervous prostration, heart disease, or exhaustion of other vital organs, in making the necessary money to keep it up. Society women, mothers and daughters, are being sent to sanitariums and rest cures by reason of the strenuous tasks imposed upon them in devising and arranging new and elaborate ways of spending the money. What a caricature much of it is upon real social life, which ought to be a joy, a recreation, a means of relief from serious work, but never a burdensome, exacting labor!
The young girl in high school gives a luncheon for her fraternity elaborate enough for a society woman of fifty. The boys plan for a good time on a scale which might indicate that they were solid business men well on in their prime, with fortunes of their own earning completely at their disposal. The whole tendency of it is bad and only bad. The simple pleasures are the best for everybody and especially so for young people. The tuxedo is not a suitable garment for a five-year-old boy even though his father is able to buy him a hundred of them; and some of our social activity is quite as ridiculous as such a coat would be on the youngster. It rears up a set of young people who, having tasted it all and become blasé before their time, are now nervously intent upon some new sensation by more startling and stimulating forms of social life. And all the while the simple, serious, quiet interests of education have been suffering a loss irreparable.