Our Common Country/Chapter 12
From time immemorial the nations and races which have been fit to assume leadership in the world were those whose people knew how to excel in athletic sports and had not forgotten how to play—and how to play hard. The great civilizations—those which have left a profound effect upon the development of mankind, those which have contributed not only to exploration, to the extension of orderly government, to supremacy of arms but even in greater measure to the thought and philosophy of the world have been the nations that developed athletic sports—who have known how to play. There was Greece, famous for the original Olympic games; there was Rome, that for centuries kept alive the customs of athletic competition in her arenas; there is the United Kingdom, great extender of enlightenment to far corners of the earth. Japan, leader in the Orient, built her power and her alertness by a tradition of training in competitive games such as wrestling and sword play. And, thank God, there is America, the stronghold of liberty and the square deal, which still can take the honors in the world's competitions in healthy sports.
I believe that play, not mere entertainment, not reading comic strips or "passing the time," as some say, but real play, play that gives a man or woman a chance to express himself or herself as an individual, is one of the finest assets in our national life and one of the best builders of character.
I believe there are reasons behind the fact that the nations that have led the world have fostered athletic games and know how to play, how to express their spirit through play, how to develop character through competition and how to let off turbulence of the spirit and wasting restlessness and discontent of mind and poisons of the body through good hard play.
Nothing is more important to America than citizenship; there is more assurance of our future in the individual character of our citizens than in any proposal I, and all the wise advisers I can gather, can ever put into effect in Washington.
We may as well go back to that sound idea right now. America will never rise higher than the merit and worth of her combined individual citizens. No nation ever has, none ever will.
I regard play as having no small part in the building of citizenship. I do not mean play for children, I mean play for everybody. The war left us nervous and irritable. As time goes on we are going to see that an industrial age will inevitably concentrate men in cities. The business executive, unless he looks out, will die at his desk—not his body perhaps but his spirit, and the worker, particularly the man behind the machine who makes only a few motions over and over again each day, will have no means of self-expression and his spirit will die too.
There are other reliefs that we must provide for these evils that threaten us, but the renewal and the preservation of a national custom of play and of athletic sports is vital to preserve the fitness of our citizenship.
Competition in play teaches the square deal. Competition in play teaches the love of the free spirit to excel by one's own merit. A nation that has not forgotten how to play, a nation that fosters athletics is a nation that is always holding up the high ideal of equal opportunity for all. Go back through history and find the nations that did not play and had no out-door sports and you will find the nations of oppressed peoples.
I am making no appeal that I will not be willing to have tested by the standards that good competitive sport has set up in all ages and among all fair men. These are the standards of a good citizenship which is willing to play the game. I want behind me only those who are willing to play the game. We have had too much encouragement from Washington given to the man who wanted to cut second base, or get something for nothing. In the first place, that is not a square deal to the rest of us; in the second place, there is no way to make a delivery that is worth anything.
I have not said anything yet about the effect that wholesome play has upon national health. We received a rude shock when during the war we came to examine physically that part of our population that is commonly called "the flower of American manhood." We examined in the first draft a little over two and a half million men and not counting those who were rejected later at mobilization camps, the percentage of rejections on account of physical unfitness went right along day after day between twenty-five and thirty-three and a third per cent.
Do you know what that means? It means that one out of every three or four young Americans in their prime—between twenty-one and thirty—is unfit. And although I am not a doctor, nor even a professor, I will take a chance and say that most of that unfitness came from unwise eating, sleeping, bad habits and no play, no exercise, no working out the poisons in good sweat, no adjustment of the human frame by stretching it in competitive effort.
Nevertheless in spite of the need for play to bring back American bodies to health, so that health may be the sacred heritage of children yet unborn, I put, even above the boons of health that play gives, the greater treasures that it confers and always will confer upon nations that preserve its customs and its morals—the treasures of honor and a sense of fair play.