PERPETUATION OF SPIRIT OF ROOSEVELT AIM OF LEAGUE

Co-ordination of various activities of the schools and colleges of the country "in the name of America and in the spirit of Roosevelt" is the purpose of the new Roosevelt-America League. Mr. John Finley has made public a statement which outlines the plans and program of this league whose object is to perpetuate "the spirit which this extraordinary man incarnated." Part of the program includes summer camps in Roosevelt's "old west."

Mr. Finley's official statement is as follows:

"The Roosevelt America League, for which a plan has been drawn up by a committee of the Roosevelt Memorial Association, consisting of Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard; President MacCracken of Vassar; Dr. James Sullivan, New York State Historian; Mr. H. S. Weet, Superintendent of Schools of Rochester; Dr. Stephen P. Duggan, Director of the Institute of International Education; Mr. Hermann Hagedorn, Secretary of the Roosevelt Memorial Association, and myself, as chairman, calls for a co-ordination in the name of America and in the spirit of Roosevelt of the physical, intellectual and civic activities of the schools and colleges of the country.

Purposes of New Organization.

"With Roosevelt's balance of physical vigor, mental energy and civic responsibility as an example, the plan as we have drawn it up, stipulates, that the purpose of the organization shall be, in general, to stimulate in schools and colleges the appreciation of the balance of body, brain and spirit in the well-moulded man, and specifically, first, to help the feeble body to become strong; second, to encourage the eager mind to find expression; and third, in the spirit of Roosevelt's practical idealism, to develop intellectual patriotism and the understanding of the duties and opportunities of American citizenship in our domestic problems and foreign relations.

"The principal function of the Roosevelt America League will be to correlate and combine every school or college activity, physical, intellectual and civic, to the end that all these activities may find their focus in the one word--America.

Details Call for Definite Work.

"Such are the general purposes of the organization whose formation we are recommending to the Roosevelt Memorial Association. The details call for certain definite efforts for physical development, intellectual expression and civic or patriotic work. These details are stated in the report which the Committee has drawn up and which is now being printed in pamphlet form for general information, criticism and comment.

"The item on the report which is likely to make the liveliest appeal to college men is that which calls for the creation of certain summer camps where courses in the principles and machinery of popular government will be given in connection with physical and military training. One of these camps for the students of the Northwest and for men in the East who want to know a bit of what is still the old West, will possibly be situated on the site of Colonel Roosevelt's Chimney Butte Ranch, near Me- dora, North Dakota. There will be others, presumably, including one in Colonel Roosevelt's own home state.

To Make Roosevelt's Spirit Live on.

"We are not proposing a new organization except where such college or school organized activities do not exist. We wish simply to make the spirit which this extraordinary man incarnated go on in its stimulating service to American youth,--to young men and women.

"In a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, which I received three weeks after his death, on my way back, across the Mediterranean, from Jerusalem I came upon these lines:

"'Yet I would that in the clamor of battle mine hands had laid hold upon death.'

"This was, as I know, the possessing desire of his last months to end his days fighting for his country and for freedom of man in the earth.

"This movement is to recruit the youth, the young men, especially those in schools and colleges, under the leadership of that spirit.