Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-22

II am rlgnC, the hard-bo1led Gym
icism of your views upon every aspect
OF athletics, avowedly professional or
amateur'-with the solitary exception
OF the conduct of such affairs at West
Points merely what psychologists call
your defense mechanism against the
incurable romanticism of a California
bred Irishman who served in the Phil
lpplnes in the Spanish War
But when you look at West Point
or at slightly pudgy gentleman in the
uniform of the United States Army, YOU
don't see them with the accuracy which
characterizes your vision of the aspiring
boxfghter or the perspiring tennis
amateur Because, without realizing
it, you are looking not at what is actu-
ally before your eyes, but at your own
lost youth and its illusions.
"You know accurately the value of
the protestations of the lily-white A. A.
u. or of a base ball magnate; but pre-
cisely similar protestations by a West
Point old grad go unchallenged by a
man with that ancient glamour in his
eyes.
II hasten to add that the gentlemen
IN Navy uniforms are equally pudgy,
and their proteStations no more sincere.
All that am trying to do is to explain
why you are susceptible to one and i'm
mune to the other.
"Quite possibly by this time I am
addressing your waste basket; but /
will set forth for its benefit why /
believe that If your suggestions were
followed all the evils (if they are
evils of mOck-amateur athletics
with which the usual college eIigi-
bility rules Intellectually contend
would be considerably intensified in
the service schools. Not that any
great harm would result since 50 per
cent of the peace-time duties of
Army and Navy officers are Orna-
mental anyway, and could be just as
we'll handled by retired foot ball
players as by any one else.
Perhaps West Point does not prose-
lyte. But West Point old grads do:
and with remarkable industry, zeal and
success. Naval Academy graduates en-
ploy equal zeal and industry, but meet
with less success, for two reasons:
q. The 20-year age limit puts an
awful crinp in their efforts;
so. Whereas Army old grads are scat
tered through the country wherever
good foot ball players grow, Navy old
grads are either out at sea or on for
eign stations or concentrated at sea-
coast points-it being impracticable to
locate any navy yards in Kansas.
THE trouble seems to be that when
you look at Navy old grad or a Cor
nell old grad or Princeton old grad,
you see-an old grad. But when YOU
look at an Army old grad you see the
Richard Harding Davis hero you most
admired and envied in your youth.
'As matter Of fact Army and Navy
old grads are probably the most pesti-
ferrous Subspecies there is, for the simple
reason that they have more leisure in
NrFIaf ala - all yfvanr FAA LII
their lives and fewer serious distractions
like the need of making fairly honest
living) to this delightful pursuit.
"One highly important popularity of
the service schools seems to have
escaped your attention: namely, the
fact that they are ESQ far as I know
the only institutions of collegiate nature
that are absolutely dominated, body,
bones and boots, by-their old grads.
Fingers in the Pie.
S"TN any civilian college the alumni
l. may have too much of finger in
the pie. At West Point and the Naval
Academy they own the pie and have
the dishing of it. At civilian colleges
the alumni association may interfere
with the faculty: at the service schools
the faculty is virtually entirely made
up of alunlni-old grads.
Furthermore, the civilian student al
Yale or Cornell is quite free to criticize
the old grads If he feels like it; at the
service schools the old grads are his
superior officers and criticism is in
subordination. Apply your real knowl-
edge of human nature, and especially
old grad human nature, to this stu
alton.
eff you know the realities OF recruit
ing in the Army for post foot ball and
base ball teams and in the Navy foi
ships teams and realized that the same
human nature that applies there APP
plies with even greater intensity to the
effort to win glory land advertising) fol
the respective services with what are