In spite of the "Hurry! Hurry!" on the outside of your envelope, I did
not like to act until I had consulted Mother and thought the matter
over; and to be frank with you, old fellow, I am by no means sure that
I am doing right now. If it were not that I feel you will be so bitterly
disappointed, I would strongly advocate your acquiescing in the decision
to leave you off the second squad this year. I am proud of your pluck,
and I greatly admire football--though it was not a game I was ever able
to play myself, my qualities resembling Kermit's rather than yours. But
the very things that make it a good game make it a rough game, and there
is always the chance of your being laid up. Now, I should not in the
least object to your being laid up for a season if you were striving for
something worth while, to get on the Groton school team, for instance,
or on your class team when you entered Harvard--for of course I don't
think you will have the weight to entitle you to try for the 'varsity.
But I am by no means sure that it is worth your while to run the risk of
being laid up for the sake of playing in the second squad when you are
a fourth former, instead of when you are a fifth former. I do not know
that the risk is balanced by the reward. However, I have told the Rector
that as you feel so strongly about it, I think that the chance of your
damaging yourself in body is outweighed by the possibility of bitterness
of spirit if you could not play. Understand me, I should think mighty
little of you if you permitted chagrin to make you bitter on some point
where it was evidently right for you to suffer the chagrin. But in this
case I am uncertain, and I shall give you the benefit of the doubt. If,
however, the coaches at any time come to the conclusion that you ought
not to be in the second squad, why you must come off without grumbling.
I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly
sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole
end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well
in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that
character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in
winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant,
and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. Did you ever
read Pliny's letter to Trajan, in which he speaks of its being advisable
to keep the Greeks absorbed in athletics, because it distracted their
minds from all serious pursuits, including soldiering, and prevented
their ever being dangerous to the Romans? I have not a doubt that the
British officers in the Boer War had their efficiency partly reduced
because they had sacrificed their legitimate duties to an inordinate and
ridiculous love of sports. A man must develop his physical prowess up
to a certain point; but after he has reached that point there are other
things that count more. In my regiment nine-tenths of the men were
better horsemen than I was, and probably two-thirds of them better shots
than I was, while on the average they were certainly hardier and more
enduring. Yet after I had had them a very short while they all knew, and
I knew too, that nobody else could command them as I could. I am glad
you should play football; I am glad that you should box; I am glad that
you should ride and shoot and walk and row as well as you do. I should
be very sorry if you did not do these things. But don't ever get into
the frame of mind which regards these things as constituting the end to
which all your energies must be devoted, or even the major portion of
your energies.
Yes, I am going to speak at Groton on prize day. I felt that while I was
President, and while you and Kermit were at Groton I wanted to come up
there and see you, and the Rector wished me to speak, and so I am very
glad to accept.
By the way, I am working hard to get Renown accustomed to automobiles.
He is such a handful now when he meets them that I seriously mind
encountering them when Mother is along. Of course I do not care if I am
alone, or with another man, but I am uneasy all the time when I am
out with Mother. Yesterday I tried Bleistein over the hurdles at Chevy
Chase. The first one was new, high and stiff, and the old rascal never
rose six inches, going slap through it. I took him at it again and he
went over all right.
I am very busy now, facing the usual endless worry and discouragement,
and trying to keep steadily in mind that I must not only be as resolute
as Abraham Lincoln in seeking to achieve decent ends, but as patient,
as uncomplaining, and as even-tempered in dealing, not only with knaves,
but with the well-meaning foolish people, educated and uneducated, who
by their unwisdom give the knaves their chance.