of the large schools have their own swimming baths. There are Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and several gymnasiums and boxing clubs. Here I found several schools of dancing. The women. have their own clubs and are keen on sports of all kinds.

In Johannesburg

Johannesburg, 6000 feet above the sea level, is one of the most amazing cities in the world in its phenomenally rapid growth and in its modern and up-to-date plan. In 1886 a few mining shanties struggled along the Reef, one of the bleakest sights imaginable. The land was considered of so little value that farms often changed hands for a team of oxen. On this desolate spot has arisen the largest city of South Africa, with all the modern comforts and luxuries of America and England to make life attractive. Here has been built up a community sanely developing in art, literature, science, music and recreation. A site of eighty acres has been allocated to the University. Another site of 4,000 acres, midway between Johannesburg and Pretoria, in 1904 was given for a Transvaal University. In Joubert Park is the Art Gallery, in which is housed a remarkably fine collection of pictures and lace. The number of parks and sports clubs is very large. The Country Club with its golf, tennis and swimming pool is in the midst of beautiful Auckland Park. The Automobile Club is equally well situated in Killarney Park. The Wanderers' Athletic Ground and Pavilion, thirty acres in extent, is in another park. Here you find cricket, football, tennis courts, and bicycling and a large hall for gymnastics and concerts, which accommodates 2,500 people. There is, too, the Turf Club, which is the best in South Africa.

In Joubert Park there is a very modern wellequipped children's ground but with no director, and it is, in consequence, comparatively little used. There are also a number of public, open air swimming baths. Still others are under construction. The Rifle Range of seventy targets is near the city and is the scene of the great shoot competitions. In the University grounds at Milner Park are tennis courts and fields for football, cricket and hockey. In all branches of sport the University stands high. Rugby teams, soccer, tennis, hockey for men and women, boxing, swimming, cricket, and athletics of all kinds are popular. Since the formation in 1923 of the South Africa. Inter-Varsity Athletic Association, athletics have

gone ahead tremendously and the universities have become justly proud of their athletes and football players. There is today a much closer cooperation between the universities.

In Johannesburg there is a Bantu (Native) Men's Social Center, with a membership of 357, whose motto is "Stronger in body, mind, spirit and character." This club is doing its part in safeguarding the leisure time of the natives. It is, perhaps, the best known of any native effort in South Africa. It is very like-in fact, it is a replica of, our American social center. Here one night I heard some of the natives speak and was amazed at their fluency. In this center, which is a large, fine building, all sorts of meetings are held. There is a gymnasium as adequate as any in our American centers where they play basket ball and handball and other games. The volley and handball tournaments have from eight to twenty-eight entrants, and tennis and boxing are popular. In connection with the center a sports ground of nine acres is being developed. There are also practical educational activities, such as bookkeeping, shorthand and typing, and Bible classes. Music forms an important part of the native life and the Glee Club is often called upon to help in the reception of notables. The children have Pathfinders and Swimming Clubs, an orchestra and game classes, and often there is a bioscope for both children and grown-ups.

At Bauerdale, Cape Province, 650 miles north of Capetown, is the only institution in South Africa where whites and blacks are educated together. Much importance is given to military drill and physical education. They have a brass band and here we find whites and blacks playing football together.

In Pretoria

Pretoria, the administrative capital of the Union of South Africa, with a white population of 50,000, is beautifully situated in a cup in the hills. It has a University and a Normal Training College, in both of which there is good sport and plenty of it. Here again one finds large play areas, but as everywhere in this country, no directors. As in Johannesburg, I found people thinking about our playground system in America and wanting literature and information. There are several Rugby Unions so strong that they are referred to as the "Live Wire." They are working for the Inter-School sports and always send their representatives to the Rugby Union. There

are scattered all over the community an astonishing number of tennis courts and cricket pitches. There are several athletic clubs with pavilions and also a good golf course.

A Survey of the Boys

of Newark

"The Boys' Work Committee of the Newark Rotary Club finds that increased facilities for recreation and social guidance for boys should exist in the City of Newark.

"We (the committee) believe that the problem of amplifying the boys' social and recreational life is a problem of civic importance, rating with that of education as imparted by the public schools under State mandate.

"Because of its general importance, we believe that the extension and coordination of facilities for this purpose should be considered by a nonsectarian and non-political civic body composed of representatives of organizations now active in the boy life field."

The paragraphs quoted appear at the beginning of the printed report of a Survey of the Boys of Newark conducted by the Boys' Work Committee of the Newark, New Jersey, Rotary Club.

In securing the information leading to these conclusions, questionnaires were issued to, and answered by, 27,586 boys of the survey age (8 to 17 years). This number represented about 85 per cent. of the public school boy registration of survey age and about 50 per cent. of that of the parochial schools.

Among the findings were the following:

The streets of Newark still provide the main play-places for the majority of city boys. The survey shows that two out of every three of the eight-year-old boys cite the street or vacant lots. as their usual places for play when out of school.

There are not enough playgrounds in the city. Despite the progress made by the Board of Education during recent years in improving playgrounds for extension use, nearly half the number of the extension playgrounds still remain unguarded, unsurfaced, unfenced and unsheltered.

Of over 26,000 school boys studied, only about one out of every five belongs to, or is served by, some organized church or school club or associa

31

tion, or by some other social organization such as the Boy Scouts, Community House, the "Y." One out of every nine belong to some self-organized small group or gang.

Of over 1000 working boys aged 14 or 15 only one out of every five belong to any sort of organization or club, regular or gang.

The moving picture theatre is the leading commercial amusement in the life of the average boy. Of 26,557 boys studied, 14,125 stated that they went to the pictures once a week, 5,823 at least twice a week, and 5,188 two or three times a month. From the early age of eight, two out of every three boys go to the movies at least once or twice every week.

No statistics on juvenile delinquency are available for Newark apart from Essex County and for the county they are incomplete. Boys furnish ninety per cent of the cases and the general consensus of opinion, local and national, is that the preventable cases become delinquent because of unguarded play activities and the lack of some proper social guidance.

In discussions concerning social problems it is very often assumed that if improvement is effected in the environmental conditions in which some of the evils of our social organization tend to flourish the evils themselves will be removed. Bad environment, it is argued, lowers standards and depresses the level of conduct; improve the environment and the level of conduct will rise.

This form of reasoning, while in a measure sound, seems to exaggerate the importance of material conditions in the fashioning of human conduct and to relegate to a place of less importance than is properly due to it the possible effect on environment of an abstract standard of values which react from within us upon our external conditions. While clearly better housing, greater security against distress, as provided by national insurance, and all the other beneficent agencies designed to ensure improved conditions of living do react on the standards of life, it is no less true that the value, in terms of human conduct, derived from those improved conditions, is in exact proportion to the degree in which human beings are capable of using them as a means of living a more civilized life. In other words, if the internal standard is that of the external slum, the tendency will be to convert the garden city into a slum.

In all endeavor for reform, therefore, the task is two-fold: to improve external conditions and to increase the capacity for using the improved condition as a means to a deeper and richer life. The latter of these two tasks is much the more difficult and it may be worth while to inquire whether there are any resources, now neglected, which might be developed in an effort to create in ourselves a greater capacity for reaction on our environment from within and whether there is any essential element wanting in our scheme of life today, the lack of which impoverishes our lives.

Before we can discover whether an "essential

*From The Social Service Bulletin, February, 1927, published by National Council of Social Service, London.

element" is lacking in our lives we must be quite clear what the essential elements of a rich and full life are. Without attempting a laborious investigation into what might be a controversial subject, I will assume that the basis of a harmonious life lies in due homage being rendered to the three absolutes-Truth, Goodness and Beauty. The word "due" at once gives rise to differences of opinion as to the relative amount of homage that should be rendered, but over this we need not stumble. It will probably be agreed that, in practice, Goodness unadorned may be singularly unconvincing and unattractive, while Truth, unless illuminated by imagination and worshipped in humility, may be distorted into a monster possessing neither Goodness nor Beauty. The history of religion and the history of knowledge both illustrate how over-emphasis on one of three absolutes, may result in disaster to human happiness. Experience, therefore, goes to show the fundamental soundness of the conception that Truth is so much less Truth in so far as Goodness and Beauty are absent from it, and that Beauty or Truth are less beautiful and true in so far as Goodness is not of them.

Now, if we consider modern conditions of life in the light of this philosophy it can hardly fail immediately to strike us that however much we may be devoting ourselves to the pursuit of Truth and Goodness (and there is room for difference of opinion even here) we certainly pay too little heed to the claims of Beauty, and by Beauty I mean the outward expression of emotional experience in sound and color, in words, form and rhythm. Go back as far as you will into the past and you will find man seeking contact with an ideal state of being through some form of symbolism and finding in sound, color, pattern and movement some compensation for the evils and sorrows of his daily life. Through these media he tried to give expression to his aspiration after a state of being higher than his own and to find a stimulus to seek ever for its realization. In days before written records were kept man found

forms in which to express his joys and fears; in the Dark Ages when the western world became a welter of savagery the tender flower of beauty is found engraved in exquisite patterns on the weapons through which that savagery was expressed; in the Middle Ages no man was so poor nor his life so sordid but he could find an outlet for the expression of his love of beauty in the work of his hands or in song and dance, while in the frequent processions and pageants of religious and industrial ceremonial, in the color and beauty of his church, there was food for the emotional hunger of his soul.

To many today all this is denied, so far denied in fact that we have come to regard what is a fundamental instinct of mankind as something found only in a special class of people and its expression as something outside and apart from the ordinary activities of life. We have grown so accustomed to the drabness, the ugliness, and the lack of beauty in our lives that we have come to accept them as a matter of course; we have forgotten that visible manifestations of Beauty are. a means to the apprehension of the invisible and the ideal.

The fact is, that the conditions of our modern urban and industrialized social life deprive us of an association, both active and passive, with what is one of the most powerful means of correcting our standards of value and of bringing harmony and balance into our lives. They rob us of the unconscious influence which Nature exerts upon mankind, and of the opportunity to express in our work the aspiration for beauty which has ever been one of the most civilizing influences in the life of man. If, then, there is any validity in the conception that the value of life depends. upon due service being rendered to Truth, to Goodness and to Beauty, we have good reason to believe that the neglect of Beauty is bringing disharmony into our lives, is robbing us of something which helps to counterbalance our crude acquisitive instincts and is thereby weakening our capacity to realize a happier and nobler organization of society.

The first needs of man are food, shelter and warmth needs which he must always satisfy. But concentration on those needs to the exclusion of others which, if abstract, are no less real, leads to all the miseries which warfare and the exploitation of the weak by the strong involve. Today the principal preoccupation of mankind is the acquisition of wealth and the question of the use

33

to which that wealth can be put for creating human happiness is too often a secondary consideration, only brought into prominence when the evils created by wealth become unbearable. Thus, with all our kowledge, we are the slaves of our own inventions, we walk the treadmill that we have, with infinite ingenuity, constructed for ourselves.

Man is a complex of forces, and just as in the abstract Truth and Goodness are so much less true and good in so far as Beauty is absent from them, so in our daily experience man's intellectual and ethical growth is so much less full and rich in so far as his emotional experience is weak. Disorder and discord must ensue where the different claims of personality are not met. If the impulse to secure possessions and the primitive kind of security that possessions bring is allowed to occupy too large a part of man's life it may become destructive of the very civilization in which the security we long for resides, and that this is not a mere academic possibility the Great War is one striking indication, and the incessant industrial strife of which the recent Coal Strike was a manifestation is another.

To help in this task of controlling our lives from within we have been endowed with certain instincts and impulses and the love of Beauty is one of these instincts. Behind it lies a force for good which is wasted if not given expression, and may even be diverted into activities which are not good; for force must expend itself, if not fruitfully then harmfully. The instinct for Beauty derives satisfaction both from without and from within. It desires both to receive and to give, to enrich experience by contact with beauty and by creating beauty. If not satisfied all the emotional force that might be used for creative purposes, for bringing beauty into life, will stray into other channels and find expression in manifestations the reverse of beautiful.

I do not suggest that the cultivation of a love of Beauty is the sole cure for all our social ills, but I do suggest that the instinct which craves for Beauty supplies a source of power for counteracting the exercise of our acquisitive instincts to the exclusion of others and for helping us to use the wealth and knowledge with which they provide us for the benefit of human happiness.

Where, then, does this lead us? At the outset of this paper it was suggested that the problem of the reform of our environmental conditions is two-fold; the objective one of improving material

conditions and the subjective one of training ourselves to a higher conception of what civilization implies. I have now tried to show that we have within us a force which only needs recognizing and cultivating in order to create within us an active sense of values which will in turn react vigorously on the physical evils with which we are surrounded. The question, therefore, is how we can set out to bring Beauty into the lives of men, how we can give them the means of satisfying an instinct which hardly knows it exists.

No complete answer to this question can be given, but there is one suggestion that may be made. There are today many among us who possess knowledge and aptitudes which cannot always be utilized in the ordinary forms of personal service and yet could be utilized in bringing more light, more beauty, more contact with great thought and feeling into the lives of those who want it and are dimly conscious of the want.

Cannot this section of the community be called upon for recruits, cannot we develop what may be called a new field of personal service, not to supplant the old, but to help it in its task of reconstructing the weak and the broken and of strengthening men and women in the struggle for a worthier kind of social life?

Efforts are being made-particularly in country districts to foster greater interest in music and drama. Cannot a more organized attempt be made to help those who live amid the grim environment of some towns to discover and develop their own latent creative power, and through the medium of different forms of art to experience the delight that comes from the exercise of those powers and the strength that comes from contact with beauty in all its forms?

Where To Go?-For Vacation. An answer to the important question is given by Vacation Service in its 1928 Vacation Guide. The Guide contains a list of 943 selected vacation places in New York, New Jersey, New England and Eastern Pennsylvania, all of which have been personally visited and investigated. It indicates amusements, facilities, distances, rates of listed resorts, and is fully indexed as to Camps for Men and Women, Places with Special Facilities for Young People, Resorts for Restful Quiet, etc.

Copies of the book may be had from Vacation Service, 315 Fourth Avenue, New York, New York, at $1.00 per copy.

Human Association

. Mr. Woods saw these conditions fulfilled in the industrial association of men, in family groups ruled by affection, and of course in worship. But I do not find anywhere in his essay reference to an example of his principle which to me is most illuminating-I mean the field of art and of games. Here emerges a third condition of fruitful association which I will call mutual leadership. In a successful string quartet there is no boss. Each person at times takes the lead, each person evokes from the others something that they did not know was in them. The interesting physical law of sympathetic vibration is here exemplified. If one lifts the dampers from the strings of a piano by putting on the sustaining pedal and then sings loudly any note in the scale, the corresponding piano-string will give out quite a volume of sound. Yet it has not been touched except by the sound waves issuing from the singer's vocal cords. When two singers join in unison, they may quite literally sing each with the other's vocal cords as well as with his own, and thereby each of them may rise to heights unattainable alone. Each of them may be able to reach higher notes than he could touch by himself, and the quality as well as the pitch of each person's tones may be changed. Something like this is what Mr. Woods saw in all the most interesting and valuable forms of human intercourse.

Doubtless he had in mind something like what has been expressed by another settlement worker, Mary P. Follett, in whose recent books we find the idea that when human beings are in unity of association one with another, whether in business, in science, in art, or in conversation, each simultaneously understands the other, evokes new ideas from the other, unites with the other, and thereby progressively improves the quality of their common purpose.

If we desire to carry out the spirit of Robert Woods' life and to make sure that he shall not have died in vain, can we do anything better than to study in the small, intimate groups which settlement life makes possible, the technique and the methods of fruitful human association?-Robert A. Woods' View of the Sacredness of Human Association, by Richard C. Cabot, published in Neighborhood, A Settlement Quarterly, January,

1928.