ing placed upon their heads. The simplicity and dignity of it all caused one to compare this with our vague and empty prize distribution, where the award is handed to the contestant by the custodian of prizes like a purchased article over a counter. One is tempted to believe that our boys surely would appreciate a more modest prize article presented to them in some formal, impressively staged way, far more than the cold-blooded, meaningless handing over of cups and medals.

The accounting and tabulation of results kept a large corps of experts with their adding machines busy day and night to keep abreast with the program, in order to have the final report ready at the appointed hour.

It was a festival of accord, without world's records.

Cologne is again its normal self, but the huge playground remains for the youth of that city to prepare for both the next Olympic Games and the next German festival, four years hence.

National games and customs cannot be transplanted; that is why base ball thrives best with us, particularly the professional kind. But one nation might with profit adopt and adapt certain possible experiences from others. Germany surely adopted and adapted much of our athletic experience, but without losing what it had. A more whole-hearted belief in the training of and furnishing facilities for the masses will insure a permanent and creditable showing at future Olympic Games on the one hand, but mainly on the other hand, a nationally sturdy man and womankind worthy of America, the land of unbounded possibilities.

From a European
Visitor

I am writing, as I said I would, to tell you a little about the playgrounds that I saw in Boston and Philadelphia. Before I embark upon the subject I should like once more to say how extremely grateful I am to you specially for the help you gave me while I was in New York. I am sure I could not have made a better contact.

In Boston I talked with Mr. Carl Shrader, who made it possible for me to spend a day at Sargent's Camp in Peterboro, New Hampshire. I had a long talk with Mr. Herrmann and was much

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Newton. I saw a great many of the Newton playgrounds, also the new gymnasium at Newton High School-I wonder if you have seen it-it is quite marvelous.

Mrs. White appears to be doing a very fine work in the community line in Boston. I was. struck with the fact that very few children were taking advantage of the Boston playgrounds.. I suppose it was near the end of the vacation and they were a little tired of the outdoor activitiesit seemed a great lack when the playgrounds there are so well equipped with apparatus and trained directors.

I gather from a little wider experience that America is not the land of gold and plenty that I thought it was, but it is certainly a land of opportunity. Do you not agree?

Except in the High Schools in one city I do not think that the standard of gymnastics is very high (you asked me to speak my mind!) anyway in the schools I visited, but it is a sweeping statement to make since I have only touched the fringe of a very big subject. Everywhere I have been impressed by the splendid organization, but such a matter as the posture of play leaders I thought disappointing-also the carriage of children in the schools-they appeared to me to loll about on their desks and as they walked in the building.

I stayed with Mrs. Valentine while in Philadelphia and lived amongst playground leaders; they are delightfully keen on their job and spare themselves not at all-judging from the few I got to know. I thought the safety patrols an interesting innovation. Two days I spent in the Children's Court in Philadelphia and on those days I realized more than ever what a splendid and what an important work you are doing in the Playground

M.D.

By

"The great misconception today is that every man, woman and child is ready to play, and all that recreation leaders need to do is to provide a ball and a playfield and everyone will begin playing and enjoy the game. This is not true."

Dr. J. H. McCurdy had been asked to give his ideas as to what are the greatest problems facing. the promotion of recreation for women and girls. His first statement summed up the whole situation in a single sentence: "Girls are not ready to play." Then Dr. McCurdy continued:

"Girls have not had the racial background of play as have the boys, nor does modern city life tend to promote the play skills of girls any more than it does those of the boys. Today boys and girls need a fair education in the fundamental skills of the various games and activities that go to make up our adult recreational program. The teaching of these fundamental skills must be the responsibility of every grammar school physical educator of the nation. It will be too late to teach them in the high school. For example, in a high school with a student body of nine hundred boys, one-third of them could not play baseball well enough to become a member of a home room team. If any of these boys dared to appear on the field to try out for the class or varsity team, they would be run off the field by the more skillful boys.

"I am reminded of another incident in which a man I know was advised by his doctor to join a Y. M. C. A. volleyball class. The man went three weeks, then dropped out of the class. I asked him why he had left. He said: 'You see, Doctor, just as the ball would be coming my way and I would be ready to hit it, a man on my right would reach over and send it back. The next time I determined to return it and before I had a chance to touch it the man on my left had batted it into the other court. It kept up like that for three weeks. The other members of the class did not say anything, but I couldn't stand the way they

looked at me. I guess I should have learned to play that game years ago.''

Everyone can add many such instances of the lack of fundamental skill by players of today. Just watch any gymnasium or games class at a Y. W. C. A. and you will realize that most of the women of today cannot enjoy even the simplest of games because they lack the fundamental coordinations necessary to any game.

"If our activities are to be truly recreative," Dr. McCurdy continued, "the girl or woman participating in them must be able to take part in them with some success, for without success there will be no recreative value in the activity. Our first step in solving this problem is to determine what are the fundamental skills that a girl should learn in grammar school, in order that she may play games and take part in adult recreational activities and enjoy them. Every woman physical educator should face this problem squarely, and meet the situation in her own school. Furthermore, the Women's Section of the American Physical Education Association should undertake an extensive study of the subject, and recommend what fundamental skills should be taught to our girls from the lowest grade through high school.

"Our next step in promoting recreation for women would be to see that every school in the country taught these fundamental skills as a part of the physical education program. In order to do this we must get the teacher training institutions to prepare every teacher who is graduated to be able and willing to teach these fundamental activities to every one of her pupils. We must get the city and state physical education directors to incorporate such activities in their programs and to train their teachers to teach them to the children of the city and the state.

"If these fundamental skills are not taught in the physical education classes of the schools, they must be taught on the playgrounds. If the latter is done, then the playground executives must re

organize their whole department so as to teach skills, not just to organize and lead games. However, in my opinion the playgrounds have their own duties to perform, and the schools are in a better position to carry on the work of education, more easily and more cheaply.

"So far the physical educators have often failed in their work by making their programs too corrective in nature. Posture should not be the only objective but should be used as an aid.

"Another problem we must face in considering recreation for women and girls is the whole question of competition. There must be intensive studies made of the effect of competition on girls, especially in regard to heart and blood pressure and functional disturbances. We must encourage teachers and graduate students to undertake such studies. The question of competition will be ever present. It must be considered from the standpoint of the physical and from the publicity which it so often incurs. Some organizations are taking girls into competition under conditions which are bad for girls socially and possibly physically. There should be some scheme evolved to regulate competition and provide proper conditions. This is particularly true of girls in industry. This phase of athletics for women must be studied very carefully.

"Finally, if our recreation program is to succeed, we must plan it to meet the needs and interests of the girl. We cannot plan a program to fulfill these needs until we know what these needs and interests are. A study should be made of the interests of girls, and our program based upon the results of this study."

Thus has Dr. McCurdy outlined in a few words the vital problems facing those who are struggling with recreation programs for the girls and women of today. Here is work for all thinking leaders to do, in determining and teaching fundamental skills, and promoting such teaching throughout the country; in studying and regulating competition; and in determining the interests of the girls of today and basing the recreation program on these interests.

Whence Comes This Delight?

"And next to it and very much like it is the kind of joy which arises without any obvious reason, and constitutes the most inscrutable element

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of life, more mysterious than death or even birth. By apparent accident we tune in and the music of the spheres is suddenly heard." Thus Sarah N. Cleghorn writes in The World Tomorrow for June, 1928. She mentions memories of incredible and apparently uncaused joys when one has with delight looked around him, perhaps when both heaven and earth were bare of any ostensible reason for his bliss. Passages in poetry and music, corners of pictures and cathedrals, seem to have some contact with fourth-dimensional existence, or something like that, from whence a spray of some prodigal delight comes showering and sparkling over. Nobody has ever worked out a technique for inducing these moods.

"One can keep in physical health, as a preliminary move toward them. The important thing is, when they come, to follow where they draw."

Love and friendship are mentioned as unaccountable joy. "Unhug your love, if you wish to keep it as sweet as in the divine beginning. Fling out, with hopeful recklessness, all that is possessive in it.”

"This sense of complete fulfilment is the natural opposite of satiety. Its fulness resides in its quality and is not mensurable in quantity and duration. It is like the glimpse of heaven which Mohammed had, which lasted only while water was being tossed out of a pitcher, yet suffused itself backward and forward over all time."

Miss Cleghorn thinks that educators find a perpetual need to settle with themselves what, with all their planning, they mean to confer upon the child they want to teach. Of course this is equally true for recreation leaders. They, too, think of selfcontrol, independent thinking, scientific observation, preparation for citizenship. In education and recreation both, is the spread and propagation of happiness enough? Is the student's eye shining? Then his education and recreation are serving him deeply and well.

"We are receiving from our children a sort of friendly disrespect for our age, our habits and our experience; with disconcerting but oh! how precious frankness they tell us the truth about themselves, all barefoot and berry-stained as they find it. And this truth is that they are determined to spend their lives for what, to the best of their knowledge, they want, regardless of what we want them to try to want.

"Because if we know anything about joy, we know that it is not reached by long deliberation, but by courageous action; and we are absurdly timid for our young.'

A great American university has named her playgrounds in honor of one of her distinguished sons. A noble memorial in the form of a massive gateway has been erected at the entrance to these grounds, carrying this man's name carved in great blocks of stone. The university has set this hour as the time for the dedication of this impressive

structure.

We expect to find here on such an occasion the life-long friends of Walter Camp-and they are here.

We expect to find here Yale men in great numbers for this is Yale ground and Walter Camp was one of the Yale family-and the Yale family. ties are strong.

But we also find here, in person and by proxy, representatives of schools and colleges from every part of this great country who have come to join with the men of Yale in the dedication of this memorial-so majestic in form and so unique in origin.

It must mean something when the colleges of America request the privilege of participating with Yale men in erecting to the memory of a Yale man a monument on Yale soil.

It must mean something when Yale men cordially share their own exclusive right with the men of other colleges who also wish to honor the memory of this son of Yale.

It must mean something when 224 other colleges and universities and 279 preparatory and high schools, representing 45 States and including the far-off territory of Hawaii, together with the leading Associations of Football Officials and of Track Coaches of the country, eagerly accept the opportunity thus graciously extended to them by Yale.

And what does it mean?

I should like to answer that question and I undertake the answer with entire confidence.

All this did not happen merely because Walter Camp was in his generation the outstanding champion of athletic sports, nor because he was for fifty years the central figure in the greatest of all

*Address made at the dedication of the Walter Camp Memorial, New Haven, Connecticut, November 3, 1928.

academic games-a game which he more than any other man developed and gave to the schools and colleges of the country..

Walter Camp gloried in the health, the strength, the speed, the skill, and the physical prowess that athletic sports develop; his heart sang with joy in the spirited clash of physical contest and combat; and the physical values which athletic sports produce so lavishly had no more eloquent and no more ardent advocate than he.

But it was not merely because of their physical values that Walter Camp devoted so much of his life to the development and advancement of athletic sports. He realized that these values pale almost into insignificance when compared with those greater values which come from athletic sports at their best-values not only of higher significance to the individual than physical prowess or a healthy body but values which mould the character and determine the strength of our national civilization-self-control-self-relianceperspective persistence-ability to co-operate

courage-fortitude-honor.

He understood as few men have, the American boy. His ruling passion was to see him develop into a man's man. He realized long before most of us, and while many were still carping at them, that in the playgrounds and athletic fields of America lies the surest hope for conserving and perpetuating the virility of this virile race-increasingly surrounded and menaced by the seductive allurements of luxury and softness.

He saw the athletic field as a crucible where the youth of the land is tested and tempered under the intense heat of fierce competition and physical conflict a crucible where the poisonous elements are driven off, and where other elements are changed into pure gold, and where entirely new values are fused into the boy's character-provided always that in the crucible there is present in abundant quantity the purifying re-agent of sportsmanship.

No man has done more for American sport than Walter Camp but his greatest contribution to sport is to the standards of sportsmanship. No man has done more to build up the Code which, if we preserve it, will keep our sports clean and

wholesome for all time and maintain these sports as one of the powerful sources of our nation's strength and our national character.

That is why this monument is here. That is why the schools and colleges of the country rejoice today in having shared the privilege of building this memorial.

And that is the reason, Walter Camp, that I am here today. I come not primarily as your old friend to tell you what our life-long friendship means to me, but I come, fortified as you may see with eloquent credentials carved in stone, representing the boys of the schools and colleges of America, publicly to express for them their affection and their gratitude.

You dedicated your life to the American boy. The boys of America today join in dedicating this monument to your memory in recognition of your service to them. You put romance, chivalry and idealism into their sports. As long as boys shall gather to play their games on lot, on playground or athletic field, may that idealism endure in all its beauty, its vigor and its virility.

A Plea for More

Playgrounds

The Annual Report of the Public Welfare, Park and Recreation Departments, Waltham, Mass., contains a recommendation that Waltham secure more play space.

"Children under twelve," says the report, "should receive more consideration than has been accorded them in the past, and the Board recommends securing small lots of 20,000 square feet each, at locations where no child would have to travel over three blocks to reach one. The ideal layout is one playground for small children in each city block, in order that the children need not cross a street to reach it, but Waltham is so closely congested in certain localities that this would entail a great expense.

"The practice of setting aside space for permanent playgrounds in new real estate developments has been spreading rapidly. The progressive realtors realize that the only way to insure future recreation spaces, which are becoming so increasingly necessary for health and child safety, is to dedicate suitable areas of land for this purpose, as neighborhoods build up. This innovation not only shows public spirit, but also has proved a

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sound business proposition. The neighborhood playground attracts home seekers and facilitates the sale of lots. It need not entail a financial loss to the subdivider. The value of the land reserved may be returned in enhanced prices, or by actual distribution of this cost to the individual building lots.

"In city additions of ten acres or more, ten percent should be the minimum of area to be set aside for recreation."

Five Principles to Guide Selection of Recreation Areas*

Emphasis should be put upon the right principles in the selection of land for parks, parkways, playgrounds and athletic fields. Five principles may be stated as being especially important:

1. To acquire those easily accessible small tracts in different parts of a city which may most cheaply be adapted to serve as local playgrounds or recreation centers

2. To seek also some moderately large tracts, even though less accessible for the present generation, provided they are capable of conversion at relatively small cost into parks which will have the beauty of natural scenery

3. To acquire property for large parks in advance of general settlement of the neighborhood 4. To select generally, though not always, lands which are not well adapted for streets and buildings

5. To distribute the lands over the city in such a way as to give the maximum of use to the people who will be called upon to pay for their acquisition, development, and maintenance.

Notwithstanding the tremendous advance which has been made in recent years, it may still be said that recreation, in proportion to its importance, is the most backward and neglected phase of American life. Compare it for a moment with the attention that is given to work or education. Adequate provision for play and recreation is dependent in the last analysis upon city planning and regional planning, and especially in the laying-out of new suburbs and new towns to meet the requirements of modern life.-John Nolen, City Planner.

*Courtesy of The American City.