"PHYSICAL EDUCATION FOR HEALTH SERIES"

Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1938
"VICTORY THROUGH ESPRIT DE CORPS"

Dre Forrest C. Allen
Director of Physical Education
Varsity Basketball Coach
University of Kansas.

The chief menu for our youth of America today has been turkey and foot-
ball. Through uwnmnumbered years the oncoming crop of youthful American athletes
will fight for their schools, will attempt to excel some old star's record, and
will attempt to right some wrong «= in all, a triple prayer of conquest te dream
true. For this is the never-changing and immortak spirit of youthe ?

It is altogether fitting that institutions of learning should keep alive
the stories of their greatest games and the exceptional feats of skill and sac-
rifice of their own heroese To add dynamic punch to the athletic days ahead and
to match the courage of today with that of yesterday, true athletic esprit de corps
must march militantly forward with its long procession of grim-visaged sports
warriors ever passing in reviewe Esprit de corps means simply "the spirit of
the corps", or groupe It is the French for an association of ideas with effect-
ive group effort. A dictionary may define the phrase as “loyalty to one's com-
rades, spirit of solidarity or group morale". However, with a more universal
usage of the phrase this definition has become incomplete. For esprit de corps
has come to mean a spirit of sympathy and pride and enthusiasm - a feeling of
oneness that makes the whole corps akin.

Like the slogan ef "The Three Musketeers" athletic esprit de corps means
"all for one and one for all" - a jealeus regard for the honor of the group as a
whole.

The @anadian Mounted Police and our own United States G-«Men have undoubt-
ed esprit de corps. They are deadly in earnest concerning their objectives. They
stick together a nd literally ge through hell to get their mane They shoot it
- out when necessarye Their own personal welfare does not matter. It is the
esprit de corps that carries them throughe

At the battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas and his three hundred
Spartans had this spirit of complete solidarity. It t20k courage for those
ancient Greeks, fighting with spears, to advance against the Persians fighting
with arrowse Esprit de corps, personal discipline, idealism, or call it what
you will, forced them through the blood and torture of the arrows of the first
ranks of kneeling archers in order that they might use their spears.

Napeleon's Gld Guard knew how to die but not how to surrender. Welling-
tonts Britishers with their thin, red and unyiclding line evinced esprit de corps
at Waterloo. Washington's frozen and starving men had it at Valley Forgee
Memories of the Civil War still flow crimson because both the Blue and the Gray
had esprit de corpse Our American soldiers had it at ChateaueThierry and in
the Argonne Woodse These are the words for it = wyielding sacrifice of self
for what seems a worthy cause, which in its ultimate analysis means immortalitye