THE PEN AND THE SWORD

Harvard seems to be a nursery for embryo brain trusters, and we are not sure at the moment that that is a virtue. The greatest doctrine of education is not Brains Make The Man, but the old Greek doctrine of A Healthy Mind In A Healthy Body. Harvard may turn out a few great brains, but the presence of so many stoop-shouldered anemics around the college, demonstrates that it turns out too many unhealthy bodies.

Vassar has three years' compulsory physical education, and look at Vassar!

Harvard should have at least four years of it, otherwise the girls will be getting ahead of us. The women are evidently going to supply the brawn while Harvard supplies the brains. But that is hardly brain-worthy of Harvard. The Vassar girl was right when she saw the humpbacked undergraduate body at Harvard and remarked that "Harvard men look so stoopid."

All through history it is proved time and again that the thoughts of great men are influenced by their physical condition. Although Pope and Swift wrote anti-social satires primarily because they were subnormal or diseased, Sophocles played baseball and wrote some of the world's greatest tragedies. Aeschylus, Poe and Coleridge are only a few of those who underwent rigorous military training, thus it secus as though a sound mind and a sound body must go together to produce great works. Their failures began when Coleridge took to narcotics, when Stephen Foster took to drink, or when Marc Antony took to women.

A college degree is not the most important thing in a man's life, though we are told it is the most important thing while we are here. But better a man who is not a Harvard graduate, than a Harvard graduate who is not a man.