The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1905-06-28

mans body, but Of damage to the
other mans character. Brutality in
playing a game should awaken the
/ heartiest and most plainly shown con-
tempt for the player guilty of it; es-
| pecially if this brutality is coupled
| with low cunning in committing 1T,
without getting caught by the umpire.
hope to see both graduate and under
| graduate opinion come to scorn such
a man as one guilty of base and dis
nonorable action, VINO has no place in
the regard of gallant and upright men.
1t is bad thing for any college man
to grow to regard sport as the serious
business Of life. 1t is bad thing to
permit sensationalism and systeria to
shape the development of our sports.
And, finally. it is a much worse thing
to permit college sport to become in
any shape or way tainted by profess
sionalism or by so much as the slight
est suspicion of money making; and
this is especially true if the profession
alism is furtive, if the boy or man vio-
lates the spirit of the rule while striv-
ing to keep within the letter. Profess
sional sport is all right within it's way.
| L
friends I number professional boxers
and wrestlers, oarsmen, and baseball
men, whose regard 1 value, and whom
in turn 1 regard as thoroughly good
citizens. But the college undergrad
uate who, in furtive fashion, becomes
a semi professional is an unmitigated
curse, and that not alone to un1Ver-
sity life, and to the cause of amateur
sport; for the college graduate ought
in after years to take the lead in put
ting the business morality of this
country on a proper plane, and he can
not do it if in his own college career
his code of conduct mas been warped
and twisted. Moreover, the spirit
which puts so excessive a value upon
his work as to produce this semi-pro-
fessional is itself unhealthy. ~
l wish to see Harvard win a reas-
enable proportion of the contests in
| which it enters, and 1 should be heart
lily ashamed of every Harvard athlete
who did not spend every ounce there
j was in him in the effort to win, pro-
vided only he does it in honorable and
manly fashion. But 1 think our effort
| should be to minimize rather than to
! increase that kind of love of athletics
; which manifests itself. not in joining
in the athletic sports, but in crowding
by tens of thousands to see other peo-
! pie indulge in them. 1t is far bet
ter thing for our colleges to have the
average student interested in some
| form Of athletics than to have them
all gather in a mass to See other peo-
pie do their athletics for them.
To the Alumni.
SO much for the undergraduates.
Now for the alumni, the men who are
at work out in the great world. OF
course the mans first duty is to nim-
self and to those Immediately depend
ent upon him. Unless he can pull mis-
| own weight he must be content to re-
main passenger all his life. But we
| have right to expect that the men
| who come out of Harvard will do
| something more than merely pull their
own weight. We have a right to ex-
pect that they will count as positive
forces for the betterment of their fell
| low wcountrymen; and they can thus
count only if they combine the power
of devotion to a lofty ideal with prac-
| tical common sense in striving to re-
aliZe this ileal
| This nation never stood in greater
need than now of having among it's
| leaders men of lofty ideals, which they
| try to live up to and not merely to
| talk Of We need men with these ideals
] in public life, and we need them just
| as much in business and in such a pro-
| feSSiOn as the law. We can by statute
establish only those exceedingly rough
| lines of morality, the Over-passing of
which means that the man is in jeop-
ardy of the constable or the sheriff
| But the nation is madly off in addition
| to this there is not a very much higher
standard of conduct, standard i'm
possible effectively to establish by the
| statute, but one upon which the COM
munity as a whole, and especially the
real leaders of the community, insist
Take such a question as the enforce
ment Of the law. 1t is, of course ele-
| mentary to say that this is the first
requisite in any civilization at all. But
a great many people in the ranks of
| life from which most college men are
drawn seem to forget that they should
| condemn with equal severity those
| men who break the law by committing
| crimes of mob violence, and those who
evade the law, or who actually break
| 1t, but So cunningly that they can not
| be discovered, the crimes they commit
being not those of physical outrage,
| but those of greed and graft on the
| largest scale. The very ricn man who
| conducts his business as If he believed
! that he was a law unto himself, there
by immensely increases the difficulty
| Of the task of upholding order wnen
| the disorder is a menace to men Of
| property; for if the community feels
| that rich men disregard the law where
it affects themselves, then the commu-
nifty is apt to assume the dangerous
| and unwholesome attitude against the
interests which In the popular mind