The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1918-03-28
Every Man An Athlete
. By Frederick J. Haskin

ed bleachers and hysterical rooters-
that is something new under the Ameri-
can sun. 1t is now to be found in all of
our military and naval training camps,
however. The commission On Training
Camp Activities has reversed the meth
college and professional athletics. In
stead Of trying to develop few crack
athletes for others to watch and ap-
plaud, it tries to make an athlete of
every man in the camps. At the can
t0nments you Will see no great thr0ngs
waving flags, yelling and singing songs.
while handful! play for their amuse-
ment but you can witness the strange
spectacle of 20 or 80 baseball or football
games going on at the same time: you
can see hundreds of acres covered with
men in khaki taking exercise, thous-
ands at time.
The national Army recruit is compell-
ed to take a lot of exercise, and he Is
given very opportunity to make of
himself real athlete. This means not
an overturned performing wonder, but
healthy man who knows how to han
die his body.
All of the standard American field
and gymnasium games are played in
the army environments. and are open to
all Corners. In order to make" team
of some sort, about the only require
ment is a willingness to try. But in
addition to these games a great many
others have been introduced. They fall
chiefly into two classes-military or
semi-miiitary sports, such as trench
rushing, grenade-throwlng and wall
scaling, and juvenile sports such as
tag, prisoners base, hide-and-seek,
hare-and-hound, duck on-a-rock and
number of others which have been in
vented or discovered in the camps.
You might think it difficult to induce
an aggregation of grown men to play
the games that amused them when they
were 10 or II years old. 1t is not. All
reports and observations show that
they take to this childish amusement
with remarkable 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 or fun. No word Is more
frequently upon his lips. He values all
occupations in accordance with the
amount of fun he gets out of them.
Then come long pants, responsibilities,
ambitions and, above all, dignity. The
word fun steadily loses its Importance
with advancing years. But the love of
fun never dies. 1t is temporarily
squelched by the sense of dignity and
lies dormant. This is abundaRtly PROV
| ed in the training camps. Anything
/ that is fun is tremendously popular.
! One Of the favorite games, for ex-
ample, is played with long rope hav-
ing a sand bag or other weight on the
end The player who is st. stands in
the center OF the. circle and swings the
weight round and round, like an athlete
about to throw the hammer. The other
players must stand within the radius of
the swinging rope, and Jump aver 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 en-
thuslastic over this sport as a bunch of
little girls over close game of hop
scotch.
Another game indigenous to the
training camps is called pass the
Hun" The players divide into two
squads, each of perhaps a hundred men.
Each of these forms two rows, facing
and holding hands. Each selects a 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 amuse-
ment to the jerkers than to the jerkee.
The company that gets its Hun to the
end of the line is the winner.
Trench rush" is another one of
these mass sports which Is closely con-
nected with actual warfare. One com
panY tries to hold position, while an
other tries to dislodge it by methods
which are similar to the line play in foot
ball and governed by much the same rules.
Hare and hound, or paper chase, is an
other game that affords great sport to
large number of men. There are
also regular cross country races. In
one of these runs 1920 men were en-
tered, and considerably over half of
them finished within a minute of the
same time. This illustrates both the
numbers that play together and the uni
formity of the physical development
which is being produced by the methods
of Dr.. Raycroft, who has charge of all
athletics for the Commission on Train
ing Camp Activities.
In the naval training stations swim
| poipo leo form Of otbIaf;oe +boE :, -,