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Who can exercise a sound judgment if he is feeling irritable in the morning? Who can work hard if he is suffering from a perpetual feeling of malaise? The future lies with the people who will take exercise and not too much exercise. Athleticism may be hopeless as a career, but as a drug it is invaluable. No ordinary man can hope to succeed who does not work his body in moderation.
They did not know, however, that before speaking, Roosevelt submitted his remarks to high officers in the Government and had their approval; for apparently they were well pleased that this burning topic should be brought under discussion by means of Roosevelt's warning. At Cambridge University he exhorted the students not to be satisfied with a life of sterile athleticism.
The Retreat Banneker had heard of as being a bachelor country club whose distinguishing marks were a rather Spartan athleticism, and a more stiffly hedged exclusiveness than any other social institution known to the élite of New York and Philadelphia, between which it stood midway. "Then I'm to go and ask him," said Banneker slowly, "whether his sister is suing for divorce?"
Neither, however, was he wholly destitute of reasoning powers and caution. The figure before him was of an unquestionable athleticism; the weapon of obvious weight and fiber. The situation was embarrassing. "Please don't lick the editor," said the interrupter of poetic justice good-humoredly. "Appropriately framed and hung upon the wall, fifteen cents apiece. Yah-ah-ah-oo!" he yawned prodigiously.
But take the case of the boy who has it in him to be a leader, who is not merely content to follow, but wishes to be at the head, in the forefront of the battle. What of him? Gordon went to Fernhurst with the determination to excel, and at once was brought face to face with the fact that success lay in a blind worship at the shrine of the god of Athleticism.
From all this one would naturally argue the existence of a specially athletic people, but the conclusion is largely illusory. The worship of athleticism breeds a professional or semi-professional class, but it is surprising to know how little an effect it has upon the crowd of city people who join in all the rites of adoration.
To-day I clean bowled two people on the pick-up, and hit a splendid four over short-slip's head. I am what I am because of our excellent system of work and play. Look at me, I say, and vote for athleticism." Buffoonery is often more powerful than the truest oratory. The motion was put before the House. A lot of people spoke. All in favour of the motion.
Recently, Nordau, rejecting the theory of his master Lombroso, has maintained that it is just as reasonable to say that "genius is a neurosis" as that "athleticism is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." On the third step are geniuses of judgment without energetic will thinkers and philosophers.
The present craze for gladiatorial athleticism I regard as one of the great evils of the age; but the thinly veiled professionalism of the so-called amateur is the greatest evil of that craze. Men play for the gentlemen and are paid more than the players who walk out of another gate. In my time there was none of that.
At our great public schools the craze for athleticism is justified on the ground that, even at the expense of the things of the mind, it does at least keep the boys from moral evil. I believe this to be a mistake, and a mistake which is due to our looking at sex from a too purely physical point of view.
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