The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-03-15
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
INFORMATION BUREAU
FREDERIC J. HASKIN, Director.
Washington, d. c.
EVERY SOLDIER AN ATHLETE.

| Washington, D. c., March IL
Athletics without stars or heroes,
i minus crowded bleachers and hysterf-
cal rooters-that is something new I'M
| der the American sun. 1t is now to be
! found in all of our military and naval
| training camps, however. The Com
| mission on Training Camp Activities
! has reversed the method which OBJ
! tains in most American college ana
| professional athletics. Instead of try
ing to develop a few crack athletes for
! others to watch and applaud, it tries
1 to make an athlete of every man IN
| the camps. AT the environments you
will see no great throngs waving flags,
yelling and singing songs while hand-
| full play for their amusement but you
can witness the strange spectacle OF
twenty or thirty baseball or football
| games going on at the same time; you
can see hundreds of acres covered
with men in khaki taking exercise,
| thousands at a time.
| The national army recruit is COM
PEELED to take lot of exercise, and he
is given every opportunity to make of
\ himself d real athlete. This means,
not an overturned performing won
der, but a healthy man who knows
| how to handle his body.
| All of the standard American f1eld
and gymnasium games are played IN
! the army environments and are open TO
1 all corners. In order to make d
/
| requirement is a Willingness to try
But in addition to these games, a
great many others have been intro
duced They fall chiefly into two
classes: military or Semi-military
sports, such as trench-rushing, gren-
| ade-throwing- wall-scaling, and
| juvenile sports such as tag, prisoners
| base, hide-and-seek, hare -and-houndS,
| duck-on-a-rock, and number OF
| others which have been invented or
| discovered in the camps
| Another game indigenous to the
| training camps is called pass the
Hun" The players divide into two
squads, each OF perhaps hundred
men. Each of these forms two rows,
facing and holding hands. Each Sc
lects d light member as Hun. He
| lays himself down at full length on
the bridge of clasped hands, and is
shot from one end of the line to the
| other by a series of rapid jerks which
| afford more amusement to the
| jerkers than to the jerkee. The com
pany that gets its Hun to the end of
| the line first is the winner.
| Trench rush is another one of
these mass sports which is closely
connected w n actaul warfare. One
while another tries to dislodge it by
| methods which are similar to line
play IN football and governed by
much the same rules. Hare and
| game that affords great sport to a
i large number of men. There are also
| regular cross-oountry races. In one
| of these runs 1920 men were entered,
| and considerably over half of them
| finished within a minute of the same
| time. This illustrated both the num-
bers that play together and the uni
| formity OF the physical development
which is being produced by the meth
DDS of Doctor Raycroft, who has
41,D Ill
mission on training camp activities.
In the nava4 training stations,
swimming is form of athletics that
| is encoura ged for obvious and prac-
teal reasons. 1t has been found that
| in some of these naval camps, half
| of the men are unable to swim. This
seems to be due to the fact that men
| m far inland are especially at
| tracted to a life on the ocean wave.
One of the southern naval stations has
| derived about 20 per cent of its re-
| cruitS from the Mississippi valley
! You might think it difficult to in
duce an aggregation of grown men to
play the games that amused them
when they were 10 or IL years old.
| 1t is not. All reports and observa-
| tons show that they take to these
| childish amusements with remarka BILE
zest. These games do not require
much skill, so that all can play them,
and they are lots of fun Now, the
| life of a boy is one long quest for
| fun. No word is more frequently
upon his lips He values all occupa-
i tions in accordance with the amount
! of fun he gets out of them. Then
come long pants. responsibilities, am
billions and, above all, dignity The
word fun steadily loses it's import
ance with advancing years. But the
love of fun never dies. 1t is tenn
porarily squelched by the sense of
! dignity and lies dormant. This is
| abundantly proved in the training
camps. Anything that is fun is tre-
mendousiy popular. One of the ia
| vorite games, for example, is played
with long rope, having sand bag
or other weight on the end. The
J player who is ;'it' stands in the CEN
| ter of the circle and swings the
| weight round and round, like an ath-
| lete about to throw the hammer. The
other players must stand within the
| radius of the swinging rope and
| jump over it. If they fail it catches
and throws them, as the "bolas'' of
the South American vaquero trips the
| fleet steer. Our young defenders wax
as noisy and enthusiastic over this
! sport as a bunch of little girls over a
close game of hop-scotch.
Since the competitive element is
necessary to sport, and it is not de-
sired to develop individual stars and
champions, the commission has
| panies against each other and deveI-
oping company spirit. Thus company
runs are held, in which each man
/ from each company will run, say, a
hundred yards, and the average speed
! of the company ascertained. Capt.
| R. F. Michigan. athletic director at
Camp Devens, has laid out a test for
| comparing the all-round physical
ability of the companies. He. states
that a man in first class physical con-
d:tion can chin himself ten times,
jump eight feet from a standing posi-
| ton, clear a bar at a height of four
feet two inches, throw a twelve pound
| shot thirty-three feet, climb TWEEN
/ ty-foot rope in fifteen seconds, run