Heroic treatment may be necessary; but until we as a people
have the courage to apply the remedies that the diagnosis shows to be
necessary, we shall look in vain for improvement.
=Physical training.=--Seeing that it is so difficult to find a man or a
woman among our people who has attained physical perfection, it behooves
society and the schools to take a critical inventory of their methods of
physical training and their meager accomplishments as a preliminary
survey looking to a change in our procedure. We seem to have delegated
scientific physical training to athletics and pugilism, with but scant
concern for our people as a whole. If pink-tea calisthenics as practiced
mildly in our schools has failed to produce robust bodies, then it is
incumbent upon us to adopt a regime of beefsteak. What the traditional
school has failed to do the vitalized school must attempt to do or
suffer the humiliation of striking its colors. There is no middle
course; it must either win a victory or admit defeat in common with the
traditional school. The standard is high, of course, but every standard
of the vitalized school is and ought to be high.
=Cigarettes.=--If the use of cigarettes is devitalizing our boys, and
this can be determined, then the manufacture and sale must be prohibited
unless our legislative bodies would plead guilty to the charge of
impotence. But we are told that public sentiment conditions the
enactment of laws.
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