ATHLETICS AND NATIONAL DEFENSE

Professor Owens, Mr. McMillin, Members of the National
Collegiate Athletic Association and the American Football
Coaches Association: I am very happy to be here this morn-
ing to take some slight part in this discussion of Intercol-
legiate Athletics in Relation to National Defense.

As Professor Owens has indicated, I approach this subject
from two standpoints: first, from the standpoint of the col-
lege president; and, then, from the standpoint of a Director
of Selective Service, being that in the state of Pennsylvania.

I might say that this dual capacity is a little confusing to
me at the present time. It is three days at the college and
three days at Harrisburg, and I take the seventh day off to
try to adjust myself to which position I am holding at that
particular moment. I find that it is a little more difficult for
me than for some of my friends to live a double life, although
I think that sometimes we think our friends are living a
double life when they are not doing so at all. I heard the
other day of a man who met a friend on the street one after-
noon and asked, “Who was that dame that I saw with you
at the sidewalk café last night?” and his friend said, “That
wasn’t a dame; that was my wife. That wasn’t a sidewalk
café; that was my furniture!” And so there are times when
we are misunderstood. But I do find it rather difficult to
make this double approach.

When I was appointed Director of Selective Service in
Pennsylvania, one of the Philadelphia papers said sympa-
thetically that I was taking up the most thankless job in the
state. But they didn’t realize that that had been my profes-
sion for many years—after all, a college president is trained
to take a thankless job as part of life.

I think there is a certain chain of hotels in which they
say that the guest is always right; and, on the other hand,
in the academic field, it is a matter of tradition that the col-
lege president is always wrong. The college president is the
one person among all the groups that make up a college or
university that hasn’t this very delightful but somewhat