is that those who are to win in this contest must have a
strong moral purpose, strong physical bodies, strong minds,
and an approach to truth that is clean and fine and strong.
Because, after all, men, if you trace back what is behind this
great international upheaval of today you will find that in
Europe and in America immorality has gone past the per-
sonal stage; it has gone to the place where nations are im-
moral, where lies are part of the force which is used by cer-
tain totalitarian powers.

France didn’t fall because of strength without. France
fell: because of weakness within, because of something inside
that was working havoc, a propaganda of lies. Belgium was
the victim of propaganda.

I come to you to suggest that in the athletic departments
of this country there lies a responsibility for building up a
love for truth, of clean manhood. There can be no No Man’s
Land between truth and falsehood. You can teach, better
than any other group of men in any college, what truth
means. That is my objection to a concealed program of sub-
sidizing in any college. It isn’t the fact that one college is
built up and beats another; it is the fact that the system of
subsidizing influences the boys, particularly the boys who
are subsidized and are told to tell nothing about it, and, more
than that, the college body as a whole. I think the time has
come when we must realize that absolute honesty, cost what
it will, is going to preserve civilization more than anything
else; that nations are but groups of individuals, and that if
people as a whole laugh at truth, if we take short-cuts, if
we sneer at moral principles, sooner or later we are going
down as other nations have gone down.

In the second place, gentlemen, we need as never before
in the history of the world men who are unselfish ; men who
are kindly; men who are thoughtful. I am sure that you
have that sort of men on your athletic teams, because let me
say this to you, that I have observed over a long period of
many, many years in education, the boys who are in team
athletics, who are strong physically, are the most loyal, are
the most appreciative boys in the average American insti-
tution. I would take them any time as over against those
boys who spend their leisure time in smoke-filled rooms—
those pseudo-intelligentsia discussing what is wrong with
the American way. If they only knew—what is wrong is
with their digestions and not with the American way! I
would rather have the type of boy who spends his spare
time on the athletic field.

And now my critics will say, “Oh, you’re in favor of
healthy morons.” No; I am in favor of healthy, normal,
loyal human beings. No; I am in favor of physical strength

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