subjection to the routine of modern pedagogy. Educational discipline is
imposed upon them through the long hours of lectures and laboratory and
recitations. The students in high school and college are accumulating a
rebound of voluntary action. This organized self-expression takes the
form of school and college athletics, which has long since been adopted
as a part of the educational routine. No considerable number of
educators are in favor of abolishing it, and only a few venture to
believe in restricting college athletics. Its moral value is everywhere
tacitly recognized, and pretty generally it is consciously accepted by
college and school faculties.

Play of this sort has great moral value. We are hired to work, and we do
it without choice or enthusiasm, but in play the natural forces and the
personal choice are at their maximum. Every action is chosen and is
saturated with the pleasure of self-expression. The result is that play
has high ethical value.

Especially has organized recreation great moral power, because it
involves team work, and the subjection of the individual to the success
of the team. Organized recreation teaches self-denial in a multitude of
experiences which are all the more powerful because they are not
prescribed by any teacher or preacher, but are the free natural
expression of the human spirit under the government of chosen associates
working out together a common purpose.

Therefore it is necessary to use play for the recreation of country
life. The word is literal, not figurative. It is not a problem merely of
games, nor the question of gymnasium, but a profound ethical enterprise
of disciplining the whole population through the use of the play spirit.
This question must be approached on the high plane of the teaching of
modern theorists, and the experience of such practical organizations as
the Young Men's Christian Association.

The Christian Associations began their work in the lifetime of present
generations and for accomplishing certain purposes they have used
recreation. They provided a gymnasium, at first, in order to get men
into the prayer-meeting. They offered social parlors in which young men
could always hear the sound of sacred song. But the Young Men's
Christian Association has traveled far from its crude and early use of
recreation. Some of the early Association leaders are still living and
still leading. They have steadily advanced with care and wisdom in the
use of re