epigrammatic that they will be cited as proverbs by our children and our children's children. As I heard that masterly definition of the laws which have governed the New Englander, I took pride in remembering that the President also was a graduate of our law school. These three are the little contributions which Cinderella has been preparing in the last half-century, for the first dinner-party of the Brooklyn Pilgrim Society.

I read in a New York newspaper in Washington the other day that something done in Boston lately was done with the "usual Boston intensity." I believe the remark was not intended to be a compliment, but we shall take it as one, and are quite willing to accept the phrase. I think it is true in the past, I hope it will be true in the future, that we go at the things which we have to do with a certain intensity, which I suppose we owe to these Puritan Fathers whom to-night we are celebrating. Certainly we have gone at this business of emigration with that intensity. It is perfectly true that there are in Brooklyn to-day more people than there are in Boston, who were born in Boston from the old New England blood. Not that Brooklyn has been any special favorite. When I met last year in Kansas a mass meeting of twenty-five thousand of the old settlers and their children, my daughter said to me: "Papa, I am glad to see so many of our own countrymen." She certainly had never seen so many before, without intermixture of people of foreign races. Now it is certainly our wish to carry that intensity into everything. If the thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing thoroughly. What we do we mean to do it for everybody. You have seen the result. We try, for instance, if we open a Latin school at all, to have it the best Latin school in the world. And then we throw it open to everybody, to native and heathen, to Jew and to Greek, to white and black and red, and we advise you to go and do likewise.

You recollect the old joke, I think it began with Preston of South Carolina, that Boston exported no articles of native growth but granite and ice. That was true then, but we have improved since, and to these exports we have added roses and cabbages. Mr. President, they are good roses, and good cabbages, and I assure you that the granite is excellent hard granite, and the ice is very cold ice. [Laughter and applause.]

E. K. HALL

FOOTBALL

The following speech was delivered at the dinner given by the New York Sun to the all-American team selected by the staff of that newspaper, in 1925. It is a remarkable speech for at least two reasons. In the first place it is an eloquent appeal and defense of a great game and in the second place it performs a very unusual task in criticizing the hosts and the occasion of the dinner. This criticism, however, is presented with admirable courtesy as well as frankness.

I WOULD like to state briefly why in my judgment the game is the great game that it is. I would like to reply to certain criticisms that are being made of the game to-day, and I would like to call to your attention, as friends of the game, certain tendencies which unless corrected will in my judgment go far to impair the almost universal esteem in which the game is held.

I do not need to argue to this group that football is a great game. It may help, however, if in our consideration of what is necessary to protect its best interests, we stop for a moment and ask ourselves the question: why is it such a great game? I am satisfied that the answer is found in the fact that the game contains practically every element essential to the highest type of sport. It offers rare opportunity not only for physical strength, agility and speed, but for mental alertness, resource and initiative. It calls for and develops confidence, courage and nerve. It affords opportunity for the exercise of all these qualities in every variation with kaleidoscopic suddenness. Its continual flashes of physical contact test the temper as almost no other game and afford continued and invaluable experience in developing its control. It develops a fine quality of sportsmanship. It teaches the value of painstaking preparation and of attention to details.

But above all, and this is the point of transcendent importance, it is outstandingly a team game with all of the opportunities of and rewards for team play. The thrill that comes from individual accomplishment alone and unaided, whether in work or play, is one of the richest rewards of effort; but it pales into insignificance when compared to the richness of the rewards for joint accomplishment.

Victory alone and unaided is sweet but there is nobody to really share it with. Victory shared with others in a common cause is infinitely sweeter. Defeat or failure in single-handed effort often leaves a man oppressed with overpowering lonesomeness. Defeat in joint effort in a common cause and the consciousness of all having done their best makes friends for a lifetime.

A college daily in one of our colleges whose team had acquitted themselves during the past season with great credit published the answers to a questionnaire which it had sent to each member of the team at the close of the season. One question read as follows: "What feature of the season did you enjoy the most?" Nine out of eleven, as I recall it, answered "the association with the other fellows on the team."

Football in my judgment is the finest team game the world has ever produced and that is the principal reason it is such a great game.

The next question we might with profit ask ourselves is why is the game so popular among those who do not participate in the game. Each year for the last twenty years, the game has steadily increased in popularity. Attendance at the important games is limited only by the capacity of the stadiums. We only have to go back twenty years, however, to recall a time when the game was under almost universal criticism. And except in a few end-season games where an ancient rivalry was responsible for large attendance, there was little public interest in the sport.

The result of the games was generally a foregone conclusion. The injuries were frequent and often serious. Players found the game a grind and spectators found it monotonous and uninteresting. It was mass play against mass play. A premium was put on beef, and the lighter team or the team from the

smaller college seldom had a chance to win. The result of the games could be predicted almost to a certainty in advance. Formation and style of play permitted and invited unsportsmanlike tactics. Officials deliberately ignored infractions of the rules. They were so frequent and difficult to detect.

Friends of the game working together gradually through changes in the playing rules removed the conditions which were harmful to the game, and mass play was prohibited. The defense which in those days made open play and broad strategy almost impossible was weakened by the introduction of the forward pass. The pass has now been developed to such a point that it keeps enough of the secondary defense back so that open running and line plunging has its real opportunity. Intentional infraction of the rules has almost entirely disappeared. The unsportsmanlike tactics that were creeping into the game are pretty much a thing of the past. Officials are enforcing the rules fairly, and their decisions are being accepted in a sportsmanlike way.

The reason the game is so popular to-day is not only that it is a great game and an interesting game, but that it is a clean game and played almost universally under high standards of sportsmanship. There is another reason. It is because it is an amateur game. Players are actuated not by financial reward but by love of the sport and sentiment for the college. It is sport for sport's sake.

More than any other nation in the world, we are a nation of sportsmen with especial interest in the outdoor sports. It is one of this country's greatest heritages. All the lessons of sport if it is played in the proper spirit are all to the good and tend to make better citizens. A poor sport in business is despised as heartily as the poor sport on the athletic field.

Of course, only twenty-two men can participate at the same time in a given football game, but thousands upon thousands can watch them in action, and I have no hesitation in saying that a crowd that has watched a cleanly played and hotly 'contested game between two college teams leaves the grounds having themselves absorbed something of the fine spirit of sportsmanship in which the game has been played. The influence of

good, clean sport is good not only upon the people who participate but the interested audiences that are looking on.

But we are told that the game is too popular, that too many people attend the games, and that the gate receipts run into enormous figures. I have little sympathy for this criticism of to-day's game. What harm if the gate receipts are large? They are contributed in small amounts, and I see no harm in the aggregate being large provided it is put to proper uses. If there is any temptation to put any part of it to improper uses this can quickly be remedied by the academic and athletic authorities by giving full publicity to the accounts.

As a matter of fact, generally speaking, the gate receipts of football throughout the country are being put to one of the finest possible uses. Football is supporting to a greater or lesser degree practically all of the so-called minor sports which do not attract the crowds because they are not the wonderful team games that football is. What better possible use could be made of the money than using its excess receipts in the support of basketball, swimming, soccer, baseball, hockey, tennis, cross country running, track and field athletics, so that each and every one of these games is open to every member of the college without any tax or special burden upon him?

We are saying a good deal lately about the overemphasis of the game. Apparently this expression does not mean the same to all people. As I understand it, this means that perhaps the game has gotten out of its relative importance in the general scheme of college life and college interests; that too much time is devoted to playing it, watching it and discussing it. There may be and undoubtedly is in spots some justice for this criticism, but to my mind it is something that can be easily and simply remedied; and in the natural course of events will tend to rectify itself.

There is some criticism that there is too much emphasis placed on winning and on winning all the games which a team plays. It may be that in spots the desirability of winning is greatly overemphasized. The real thing is to have a team that deserves to win, and goes into each game determined to win if it is possible. That's the sporting spirit, and with teams indifferent to whether they win or lose the sport would soon die out.