that made an impression on me was that of a boy who had several dependents, and when asked if he claimed exemption, he replied, "Yes, I deserve exemption, but I am not going to ask for it." More and more every day I realized that soldiers' families were calling to some of us who were left at home.

It so happened that at Camp Lee some big-souled officer decided that it would put heart into the mothers at home if they could know the men who were to guide and care for their boys overseas, and the plan was made to send to Pittsburgh and ask the mothers of the soldiers to hold a remembrance night; the boys would meet the second Friday of each month, and the mothers were to do the same.

On account of my work with the Civilian Relief of the Red Cross I was called to meet Captain Barratt O'Hara of the 319th Regiment, of Camp Lee, and we arranged for a big "parents' meeting" on February 10 in Soldiers' Memorial Hall of Pittsburgh. The officers came and the fathers and mothers, five thousand of them, and there was a band, too, and flags, and distinguisht speakers. It was a most impressive meeting, but when it was over the real meeting came, for it was announst that the officers wisht to shake hands with all in the Hall, and what a greeting! "You know my boy?" a man would question. "Know him! Why he's the finest boy in my company!" And so the greetings ran.

This meeting showed us the need for the organization that was in our minds, and we set about it by means of an advertisement. We asked all mothers to come to a meeting to register and get in a moving picture that was to be shown in the camps. The picture was to be taken at one o'clock, but the mothers began coming at half-past eleven. They were not all very well drest for the picture; many had their heads tied up in handkerchiefs, but everyone had a service flag, and many came a long distance-from Beaver, Ligonier, Zelienople, and Elizabeth.

I said to Mr. Dawson (the Pathé man) that we would never be able to photograph them. He said, "Now we are going to take the picture.' His plan was to ask the women to get up and go outside and then walk toward the Hall. I said that it would be impossible to ask them to do this. He said, "I know women and how they like to have their pictures taken." I said, "But they have come early to get front seats." "All right," he said, "you try." So I said, "Ladies, I am very sorry that we didn't get you as you were coming in. Those who care to get into the picture, if you will please step outside. . . . ." Before I was half finisht, every woman was up and on her way out, with her knitting bag, bundle, baby, and all. Then they marcht slowly, while Mr. Dawson was winding the film, every woman waving her flag and trying to get as near to the camera as she could.

I spoke to one woman as she was going out and said, "It is too bad, after you have come to get a front seat." She replied, "Not at all, that is

what I came for, to get in the picture." That day we had registration cards asking for the signee's name and address, with the name of her son and his camp. They could be signed by either mother or sister, and I took home over eight-hundred signed cards. Of these there were fifteen mothers who had three sons in the service; one mother had four sons in the service; fifty-five had two sons; five had two sons and a daughter in France. One card in particular read three sons, name of camps unknown. We sorted those cards into districts and selected the ones with the most promising handwriting and wrote to the signee and asked her if she would come to an organization meeting and bring as many mothers as she could gather. And so there was born the organization known as the Mothers of Democracy, whose plan it is that all soldiers and women shall have a mother's remembrance night on the second Friday of the month, and there can't fail to be a strong spiritual-mental bond productive of good cheer.

To our surprise, in every district (and we now have forty) women came forward who seemed especially fitted for the work of organization. They were born leaders, to whom an opportunity had never before come, and we found them eager to take the responsibility of the first meetings we arranged for, and to them has been given the responsibility of all the after-meetings.

The programs they prepare are very varied; one devotes its time to a literary entertainment, where the women knit as they listen to music and speeches, largely by themselves. Other meetings are for regular Red Cross work, where letters from the boys overseas are exchanged, and ideas for Christmas and birthday boxes are promulgated.

At all gatherings good cheer and fellowship reign. Careful speakers from other spheres of activities are often introduced to try to interest the Italian mother and the young Polish wife who lives round the corner, and whose little baby keeps her from attending other meetings. Or perhaps there is a speaker from overseas, who tells of what his comrades are doing, full of pride and patriotism and achievement, planting the seeds of the same feeling in the hearts of the mothers before him.

Germans and Poles, English and Scotch, Italians, Swedes, and Jews laugh and cry together at the stories that are told and the songs that are sung in this commingling of interest from which are being born patriotic American mothers.

And so the schoolhouse is becoming a community center, where the heart as well as the head is educated. And when the Mothers of Democracy stand shoulder to shoulder with their sons in service, to America a dream of many who love our country's good will have come true; for from the Mothers of Democracy shall be born the Sons of Liberty, free from race prejudice, free from the bonds of ignorance, and pledged to the service of God and Home and Native Land.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN THE HIGH SCHOOL IN THE

PRESENT EMERGENCY

W. S. SMALL, SPECIALIST IN SCHOOL HYGIENE, UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, d.c.

In the year 1917, 2,500,000 men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one years were examined for the National Army. Of these, 34 per cent were found physically unfit for military service and were rejected. Many of these were rejected on account of remediable defects; just how many we do not know, but probably somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent. If we accept the lower figure, then about one out of every ten men of draft age is unfit for military service because of remediable physical defects.

That is not the whole story, however. Of those who were accepted as being without physical defects, a large proportion were lacking in the strength, endurance, and general organic power necessary for intensive military training. This defect had to be made good by months of purely physical training in the training camps.

Here then are two facts: a large amount of rejection for physical defect, much of which could have been easily remedied in school years; and a large amount of undevelopt physical capacity, all of which could have been developt during school years. If physical education means anything worthy of respect, it means that these undevelopt resources of human capacity and human happiness should be conserved and developt. Whether we think of these wasted resources in the terms of soldiers of the future, or of workers of the future, or merely as citizens of the future, we must realize that this is a real problem, and that it demands for its solution high intelligence and genuine sacrifice.

There are in the United States approximately 5,000,000 boys of highschool age. Of these, there were enrolled in secondary schools in 1916, 750,000-approximately 15 per cent. These are the selected youth of the nation, selected either by intellectual capacity or by economic opportunity. It is a service and a duty of the highest patriotic import that confronts our high schools to develop to its full capacity this potential man power.

Under the Revised Selective Service Regulations for Physical Examination of the Provost Marshal General there are four classes: those who are free from defects and are therefore fit for immediate training for general service; those with remediable defects who may be made fit by corrective measures; those with non-remediable defects who, however, are capable of limited service; those who are totally unfit.

This classification naturally suggests a method of procedure in the high schools in the present emergency:

1. A thoro medico-physical examination of all high-school boys and classification approximating the draft classification. This must be done with intelligence, discretion, and sympathy-in such a way as to encourage,

not to discourage, those who are found to have defects. The greatest kindness and the greatest service that could be rendered a boy handicapt by a defect would be to reveal to him the nature of the defect, the limitations it imposes upon him, and the method of overcoming or obviating it. This would preserve self-respect and stimulate ambition.

In schools with a well-developt system of physical education this will involve little that is new. In schools which heretofore have neglected this first principle of physical education it will be wise to begin with the Senior class. The Seniors have but one year in which to recover lost ground. Personally I would then take the entering pupils, the second-year pupils, and the third-year pupils in that order.

2. There should be no high-school graduates in the second class Corrective and remedial measures should be carefully prescribed. Whatever treatment is required should be insisted upon, and the elimination of the defect or progress toward the elimination of the defect should be an absolute condition to graduation. Some will require surgical treatment, some medical treatment; a great many more will require corrective exercises and practice of hygienic habits.

3. For students of the first class, those free from defect, there is required an intensive and varied program of physical training under discipline to develop strength, endurance, muscular skill, alertness, cooperation under leadership, and the other physical and social qualities essential alike in military or civil pursuits. No boy of this class should receive a diploma who has not received and profited by such training to the end that the waste of time now incident to conditioning soldiers may be reduced to a minimum, and to the end that high-school graduates who go into civil pursuits may be capable of rendering maximum service.

This will require time. Two hours a day is the minimum-one hour for disciplinary exercises under strict plan and direction; one for recreational exercise, giving free play to individual preference.

In addition, physical labor outside of school may be included as a substitute for part of the exercise. This will require analysis of the character of the muscular processes involved in the work and its proper evaluation in terms of physical development.

Above all, athletics must be utilized and extended, must be made a part of the training of every boy. The testimony of the commanding officers of the training camps is uniform as to the value of the mass or socialized athletics as preparatory military training. "I have observed" says one, "that athletes assimilate discipline quicker than any other class of men. Their experience in athletics has taught them the necessity for discipline and team work."

One of the tragedies of American education is the failure, in any large and general way, to understand and capitalize this rich resource of physical and moral education.

What of the girls? Are they not to be thought of in this emergency? My answer is that everything I have askt for the boys I ask for the girls. Racially the educated vigor of woman is more important than that of man.

Is such a program an irridescent dream? That depends largely upon the high-school teachers. If we are able to free ourselves from the subconscious legacy of the ascetic and scholastic habit of thought and look with level eyes upon this great opportunity we can accomplish much. The public mind is awake and sensitive. It needs but directing vision to make it act.

CITIZENSHIP AND ATHLETICS-A CONCRETE EXAMPLE GLEN F. THISTLETHWAITE, DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL TRAINING, HIGH SCHOOL, OAK PARK, ILL.

The purpose of all education is to train for citizenship. Physical education has to do with the health, the growth, and the development of our physical being. Athletics are usually considered a phase of physical training or physical education, but to be so classified they must be educational, and where they are educational they must certainly train for citizenship.

It is the purpose of this paper to show how athletics may improve our citizenship when directed in the proper way, and to do that a concrete illustration will be used. But first it must be remembered that when we speak of the athletics of our high-school pupils we mean more than interscholastic contests and games, and for that reason we shall think of interschool or interscholastic athletics and intraschool or intramural athletics.

For our concrete example the Oak Park and River Forest Township High School at Oak Park, Ill., is used, not because it has solved the problem any better than many other schools, but because being located in a suburb of a large city, under large-city conditions, and of about average size-1400 pupils it offers a fair illustration.

The after-school hours, from the time school closes until the dinner hour, form the most valuable period of the day for practical physical training. Theory and suggestive exercise can be taught during the regular class hours, and some corrective work can be done then, but the greatest good derived from physical training during school hours as practist in the average school is its recreational value from the regular school work and the habits formed in personal hygiene and discipline. For healthful exercise the time after school must be utilized. Very few pupils do any studying from the time school is out until dinner time. At the close of the school day the pupils are more or less fatigued in nervous energy, and recreation and exercise of some enjoyable nature should follow immediately.

We have always provided that exercise and supervision for a small percentage of our boys in the form of interscholastic athletics. Our inter