for the ministry. In his desire to do more for youth, he entered
Springfield College, along with Alonzo Stagg, his classmate, and
during his senior year was given an assignment by his instructor,
Dre Luther Halsey Gulick, to originate a game which would take
care of eighteen troublesome young men who were students at Spring-
field College. This game was to take care of the surplus energy
of these students between the football season in the fall and the
baseball season in the spring. From the brain of Dr. Naismith
came basketball, the game in which twenty million people are play-
ing annually. The aggregate attendance at basketball games in the
United States is ninety million.

I then compared Froebel, the emancipator of infancy
and early childhood to Dr. Naismith, a great educator from the
early teen-age until the early thirties of young manhood. I
stated that I had heard eight educators from one platform state
that basketball had all the qualities necessary for an educable
child. None of these speakers were athletic people or coaches.
Then I quoted Dre Naismith's famous words, "Basketball is a game
easy to play but difficult to master." And to show his modesty
when the National. Association of Basketball Coaches raised seven
thousand: dollars to buy him a home and to send him and lirs.
Naismith to Berlin, Germany to witness the Olympic Games, his
very epic statement was as follows: "Do not be afraid to serve
humanity and wait for your reward."

I then paid the best tribute i could to this kindly,
Christian man and called attention to the fact that this fiftieth
anniversary of the game of basketball has deep significance.

I spoke last year at MePherson, Kansas, to the Re-
bounders Club, a group of devotees and enthusiasts boosting
basketball at licPherson, I gave as my opinion the secret of
our defeating Southern California for the Western N.C .AeA.
championship. After I had spoken a practicing physician there,
a Kansas alumnus, came up to me and said, "Say, Phog Allen,

did you ever give that talk to the students of the University
of Kansas?" And I said, "No, sir, I never have." He said,
"Do something for me, will you? Give them that talk at the
first opportunity."

I have turned it over in my mind for a year, and when
the opportunity presented itself I thought I would try it out.
I said to the students that youth is alweys first to catch the
deep currents of human tides and emotionse For the sake of
brevity I will quote the following part of my speech.

"About six years ago when the State Board of Regents
were of the opinion that the football team was not winning enough
games they made a change in the Athletic Association and elected