ation, a book, "How to Get
Strong". He advocated the gymnasium--the fatal trainer's paradise that
has killed so many men. He died, when he had just passed his 50th year,
of dilation of the heart superinduced by _intensive training_. He
believed in enormous muscles and brute strength, rather than skill,
endurance, and good form. He had overtrained and had an overworked
heart. The writer was pitted against a man who was almost a duplicate of
Sandow. He could have pitched me over his head. He could, with a twist
of his immense arms, break a spruce oar in a racing shell. When the last
few boat lengths of the long three miles loomed up--and victory for him
was almost in sight--his sand gave out--his heart was almost broken and
he lay down and threw up the sponge in defeat. He was "pumped out"; he
had overtrained and "gone stale". He pulled "too much beef", and lacked
the courage--sand--nerve and guts that wins at the most critical moment.
He weighed 180 pounds. He could have been better utilized as a battering
ram on a foot ball team to fall down upon some smaller player and break
his back or neck. Our stroke weighed 140 pounds. Some men may train for
a prize fight until they can run 15 miles without breathing hard, and
then, inside of three or four minutes after entering the ring begin
wheezing like an old wind-broken horse. This is due to a _nervous
contraction_ of the pulmonary region, caused generally by nervous
fright. They are too tense and rigid to fight effectively. The writer
has seen the same thing in battle with over trained men--perfectly
tense, dazed--almost speechless--from fright and nerve shock alone
before they could get it under control. This does not imply that they
were cowards-- A man's supreme or best mental and physical efforts does
not depend upon his size, his huge muscles abnormally developed by a
long period of intensive training, or through his intellectuality
acquired by years of school, college and university education, but,
largely through the _spirit_, _force_, _courage_, _discipline_ and
_morale_ which are behind his purpose--that purpose which must furnish
the mainspring of his action.

This refers particularly to the soldier in his _intelligent_ (and by
this the writer does not mean the intellectual) application of that
power and those resources to the actual conditions of the problem with
which he is hourly, even momentarily, confronted when on a battle line
under the hell of fire. This he