The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-12-15

lnvuinerable, had really let down in 'i1e4r play and were unable to cope on equal terms with ther fellow play ers' believing in their captain, were oemoraIlzed by our success in attack ing thls point on their line. After all, Iootpall is mostly psychology
 True are the words of Dobte. and true' is the fact that there have been ana always will be football captains Who rise under the added responsibiI- z lty of. their office to great heights as players, but the majority of them go the other way. There is much psy- chology in the whole thing. For one thing captain may have an off day. AS rule the coach will stick by the captain to the limit for he representa- the team. Therefore, he will not crizq tlclze a captain as freely as other play CTS. In time this may be interpreted as favoritism and lead to dissatisfac, tion. It often has.
 Charles B. Courtney of Cornell dean of American rowing coaches, held views we'll in advance of but similar to Dobie's on the subject zof capta1cs. Courtney ruled with an iron nand and practically abolished crew capta1ncies at Cornell in the days when he placed Cornell at the top in college rowing. Often have I heard Cornell oarsmen tell of the way the "Old Man" assumed all powers and left the racing of his crews to the two best men fitted for the job-the stroke oar and the coxswain. From the players standpoint the captaincy is good thing and the cap tain himself seems to think so. But the facts prove it is not always best for the team. The game has grown beyond the undergraduate days of leadership. It requires older and more experienced men to handle a football team than it did twenty and twenty five years ago when Yale stood at the top of the football world and owed it's success to . system which placed the captain at the head. YaIe's cont plete downfall was due, in no small measure, to it's hesItancy in dtscarding the old scheme of things for the new, to clinging to captainey leadership when all others had delegated su- preme powers to the coach. e l Whatever scheme of power is fol- lowed it is necessary that the leader be leader in both act and name. Per haps no other class of officials in America have ever shown more abiI- ity or command more respect from l those under them than our regular army officers. They have the knack of understanding human nature and of scoring in those little personal en- Icounters between men that fa1oneFare distinguishing marks of leadership. Witness this example:
 A company Of men in training at Ft. Niagara last summer for commis- sions in the U. S. R. were commanded l by very human, very Hkeable and very fine regular army officer-a cap tain. He was every inch the man and was, so full of energy that on Satur- day afternoons he always played ball with the men of his company. All the time he was called Captain" It be- came somewhat difficult for the men under him to remember that during the times of excitement, incident to baseball game.
 One afternoon, after he had been in charge of this company for some six weeks, he called the ball teams to- gether and asked them to forget his title for the afternoon, to consider him one of them. Shortly afterward he came to the bat and rapped out two bagger. He had to go at top speed to make second safely, and as he rush to that bag the player coaching on the first base line yelled at him at the top of his voice:
 "Slide, you -, slidei"
 Reaching second safely the Captain jumped up on the bag and roared at the top of his voice:
 Prom here in I'm Captain!" l. Copyright, 1917, by Sol Metzger)