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Now once again free men are defending their freedom. It is imperative that whatever impact
programs of health and physical education make upon the development of men who cherish this
freedom must now be intensified. This intensification will require a complete mobilization
of our energy, strength, and wisdom to the end that each college student will reflect in his
every act sound health and an appropriate physical education as important aspects in the
defense of this democracy, no matter what may be-his part of it.

We must look to the quality of this physical education experience. This Nation, faced
as it is with a war for survival, looks to the quality of men and their ideas to turn the
tide: It has always been so, and there is no reason now to believe that free men cannot
preserve their freedom by their own strength. We pride ourselves upon our democracy. We
allege that we know what our democratic freedom is and how it is to be preserved. Our al-
legations now must be established and physical education departments must show clearly their
relationship to a college education which produces an educated, informed, strong, and urbane
citizen of a democracy. These programs must contribute to this democratic way of life as
surely as any other aspect of the college curriculum must contribute. All such programs
must be reviewed today not only to see whether they adeauately prepare men for military life
but whether they are good in terms of democratic purposes, whether they have outworn features
of former disciplines, whether their structures are living demonstrations of equality in op-—
portunity and whether they are educational in the fullest and best sense of that word.

Nothing has happened since Pearl Harbor was attacked to make us believe that in order
to win from the totalitarian Axis we must ourselves become totalitarian. Imitation of their
methods need carry no further than a matching of military might and tactics. Imitation on
any other front may be looked upon with considerable skepticism for fear that in our anxiety
we may sacrifice something truly essential to the very thing the Nation is fighting to
preserve. As long as they remain compatible with the national wartime economy and do not
jeopardize our military effort, the individual's rights to self—determination, to self—
direction and to a full participation in distinctly American activities of purpose and
meaning must be preserved for him.

If this point of view has merit it has great meaning to physical education in our
colleges. Physical education is at a crossroads of its development. Shall it imitate
the Axis by copying their systems. of physical training; the heavy apparatus of the Germans
of 1820, the marching tactics of Bismarck's 1870 Germany, the precision drills of the
Italians, or the jiujitsu of the Japanese? Far better for physical education to prosecute
to the utmost of its ability the typically American program of. games and sports with all
of their objective and satisfying values. Physical education must continue with its pro—
grams of swimming, golf, tennis, baseball, football, soccer, running, handball, squash,
fencing, basketball, and other sports, including in the training of men for each sport
occasional conditioning exercises so essential to efficient performance as used by our
most intelligent teachers. :

Through vigorous teaching of these activities will be found most of the virtues
of strength, condition, and discipline which are so feverishly sought as a part of pre-
induction preparation. There is no evidence to prove that physical education should for—
sake these games and the training they afford by the adoption of a program of robot—type,
drillmaster, formal exercises of nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. Physical
education departments everywhere should reaffirm their faith in the typically American
program of sports and athletics. Through the intensification of these activities and
the purposeful physical preparation of men engaged in them will come the certain values
of individual and national wartime importance, and thus young college men of America
will come to their war service conditioned mentally and physically to accept such rigors