an aid, I should be sorry to see them ever regarded as a
substitute for games. Even supposing that they were an adequate
substitute in the development of the body (which I doubt) they cannot
claim to have an effect at all comparable to that of games in the
development of character. Sometimes the most extravagant claims are
put forward on behalf of athletics as a school of character, almost as
extravagant as are the terms in which at other times the "brutal
athlete" is denounced. I don't think it is found by experience that
athletes cherish higher ideals or are more humble-minded than their
less muscular fellows; I doubt if they become more charitable in their
judgments or more liberal in their giving. We must carefully limit the
claims we make, and then we shall find that we have surer grounds to
go on. What virtues can we reasonably suppose to be developed by
games? First I should put physical courage. It certainly requires
courage to collar a fast and heavy opponent at football, to fall on
the ball at the feet of a charging pack or to stand up to fast bowling
on a bumpy wicket. Schoolboy opinion is rightly intolerant of a
"funk," and we should not attach too small a value to this first of
the manly virtues. Considering as we must the virtues which we are to
develop in a nation, we realise that for the security of the nation
courage in her young men is indispensable. That it has been bred in
the sons of England is attested by the fields of Flanders and the
beaches of Gallipoli. We shall therefore give no heed to those who
decry the danger of some schoolboy games. For we shall remember that
just as few things that are worth gaining can be won without toil, so
there are some things which can only be won by taking risks. Few
things are less attractive in a boy than the habit of playing for
safety; in the old prudence is natural and perhaps admirable, in the
young it is precocious and unlovely. But we need not introduce
unnecessary risk by the matching of boys of unequal size and age. The
practice, for example, of house games in which the boys of one house
play together, without regard to size or skill, is very much inferior
to an organisation of games by means of "sets," graded solely by the
proficiency which boys have shown. In each set boys are matched with
others whose skill approximates to their own; they are not overpowered
by the strength of older boys and can get the proper enjoyment from
the display of such skill