Evening star., 1939-08-20
1T A DINNER party recently l listened


~ in while two distinguished men,
q u bers of the very-much-older gener-
alton fired off broadside of opinions
about Americas young men. They were
sure, with hearsay sort of wisdom. that
our eighteen to thirty-ye old youth are
flabby; that they take their sports by
proxy and don't work up more than three
good sweats year; and, in general, have
none of the brawny virtues with which,
50 the story goes, every Americans grand
father overaowed.
That's where Hitler is way ahead of
US, one of them said; ''he penalties soft
ness. We put a premium on it.
The next days newspapers carried the
story of how twenty three -year-old
young man, gifted musician and city
dweller, had lost his life as he tried to
scale the side of giant cliff near New
York City. He, like his twenty-year old
companion, was an experienced mountain
climber They had rated this climb merely
as a casual outing - far less dangerous
than most that they had undertaken.
hope my skeptical friends of the night
before didn't miss that story.
They might have been interested, also,
in company of young Americans met
last summer in Europe. They were half
way across France, en- route by bicycle to
Switzerland. Their aim was month of
mountain climbing in the high Alps. In
fact, last summer so many young Amerl-
cans turned up for the toughest Alpine
climbs that there was an acute shortage OF
guides and the Swiss government was
obliged to take special action to stop
youths from going out without guides.
These young people may have been fool
hardy But they weren't soft. 1t is said
that here in the United States no less than
$4,000 young people between the ages OF
eighteen and thirty are seriously addicted
to mountain climbing - perhaps the most
hazardous of all sports. The men at that
dinner table might be surprised to know
that that figure represents more mountain
climbers than ever before - even in the
days of our grandfathers.
When Admiral Byrd announced the
plan for his second expedition, we'll over
thousand young men laid siege to him for
a chance to risk their lives for two years
in the antarctic Only the first announce
ments of his third expedition have been
made, but already the Admirals office in
Boston has bulging file of applications.
A few weeks ago sat in the Office of
young lawyer in the city of Minneapolis.
In his undergraduate days he had been
member of the ski team at the University
of Minnesota - skiing, incidentally, rates
near the top among strenuous sports.
Notwithstanding busy legal and political
career, this young man still skis. He was
due to leave the next day for the Pacific
Coast where he was to serve as member
of the committee that would select a ski
team to represent the United States in
next winters Olympics. Its job" he
said, picking team. All of sudden the
country has gone ski-conscious and there
are literally thousands of good skiers."
He is right about that. During the
winter of 1888 the country's railroads
carried more than 100000 skiers, the air
lines put on snow planes and the skiing
business had become a S2O,OOOO0O in
dustry.
Those 100000 and more who went to
the snow via train and plane are only
small fraction of the total who ski. At the
University of Washington, where skiing
is major sport and money major prob
lem. weekend expeditions to the noun