PUTTING ON THE HIGH SEAS

Inasmuch as the Twentieth Century abounds in paradoxes, it is not the vogue to express either amazement or bewilderment over the sometimes irreconcilable phenomena of modernity. Still credulity and belief have their limitations and even the imagination talks when asked to solve the enigmatical causa causans of the enforcement of compulsory golf at Annapolis. It is not unassuming to picture natty mid-shipment pursuing the elusive golf pellet over the briny billows of the deep. No ardent enthusiast of the green has falled, at some moment or other, to meditate upon the possibility of a rolling sea suddenly solidified, but the very idea of battleships being equipped with golf courses, midshipmen adding knickerbockers to their accouterment, and the employment of Marines as caddies would have been considered an hallucination. However, the announcement that the United States Naval Academy has recently become the first college of importance in the country to make the modern business man's relaxation a compulsory part of its curriculum substantiates the fact that great initiatory movements might have their inception in the most unexpected fountainhead. The penetrating of a new frontier by the "middies" is at one and the same time a challenge and a reproach to the rest of the collegiate athletic world which evidently has been far too backward.

Reasons are not wanting for the new step at the Naval Academy. It is pointed out that the midshipmen's social standing after graduation hinges upon their ability to distinguish between a putter and a mashie and that since they will associate with groups who indulge in the divertissement they must be among the initiated. Furthermore, those who have their welfare at heart emphasize the fact that the Navy develops men, not wallflowers, another reason why its protegees must know their golf. Indeed, it appears as though superdreadnoughts are going to be deserted for country clubs and the domain of the weary industrial magnate invaded by a more enthusiastic and energetic devotee.

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas," wrote Virgil, but in this instance much more fortunate is he who can divine the results of the new course at Annapolis. Those whose illusions concerning the virile midshipman, puissant hero of the boxing ring, the gridiron and the crows nest of a cruiser battling a nasty northwestern, have been shattered are warned against visualizing future admirals in knickers wielding mashles. There are some things, which a narrow deck and a heaving ocean will not permit. Golf might be said to come under the general category.