In public life the percentage of successful men who are graduates of the gridiron is high. In the fall of 1912 "Bum" McClung - to give him his undergraduate title-Treasurer of the United States under President Taft, gave a dinner to the famous Yale eleven of '91, the team of which he was captain; and the men who gathered around the board compared more than favorably in the matter of character, reputation and attainment, with practically another picked dinner party of non-football men from the same class.

The true character of the football player has come to light only in recent years, for as a rule he talks football in after life only to his fellow veterans, from any institution whatsoever, and many a man has worked alongside of one of these gridiron stars for years knowing nothing from his comrade's lips, and frequently learning from no other source either, of the worker's reputation on the gridiron. Indeed, many a man who comes before the public eye would prefer that nothing be said about his football career, a career that belongs entirely to himself and his friends - to them and the great host of gridiron veterans among whom it is really in the nature of a bond.

In recent years both faculty and undergraduate have come to look upon their football players as more and more expressive of the collegiate ideal - have come to feel that with all the achievement of the scholastically perfect, the merely public measure of the institution must be taken to a large extent from the performances and the bearing in the arena of the athletes, the most important of whom are the football men.

There have been from time to time important movements looking toward the purification of football - commendably when the game was in dire straits. Not the least of these newer undertakings was the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and to its everlasting credit be it said that it began without ostentation or assumption of power, believing that "influence" and nothing else would justify its existence and the existence of the game it sought to some extent to guide but not control.

Since the beginning of the game there have been several elements interested in it, not the least of which have been the fraternity of players, never more solid and tolerant than now; the faculty influence, never more inclined to discern in the game its lasting value; the influence of the coaches, never more nearly on the high plane to which it has been sought again and again to establish that influence; and undergraduate support, never more inclined to sanity, despite the organized cheering to which so many object, than in these early days of the Twentieth Century. If I believed that any or all of these influences would fail of serious improvement in the course of the next twenty-five years, or if I believed that there was anything fundamentally ephemeral connected with American intercollegiate football, these lines never would have been written.

Opinion against football and opinion in its favor have both reached the stage where each is willing to inquire of the other, and where the "highbrow" of opposition is removed not more than a parasang or two from the "low brow" of what has been too often overenthusiastic support.

Not the least of the goodly football influences have been such men as Dean Briggs of Harvard, elected in 1912 president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and men like Dr. A. L. Sharpe, of Yale, who took upon himself the recrudescence of Cornell football in more ways than one, not to mention other semi-athletes, semi-faculty men, whose word is accepted alike by the athletic element and the gentlemen of the university staff. It was not so many years ago that public and scholar alike felt that he who taught athletics, and especially football, was a little lower than the rubber with whom they had been accustomed to associate track athletics.

Since those days gymnasiums have sprung up mushroomlike all over this broad land, and it remained for the University of Wisconsin to solemnly inculcate in its curriculum, counting therefor certain university hours, the "Technique of Football." In recent years men whose goal in life lay far beyond the cross-barred field, have been willing to sacrifice a large part of their time each fall to tuition in the technique of football.

Perhaps the foremost proponent of this ideal was Professor Raymond G. Gettell, of Trinity, who for some time astonished the football world by turning out a series of victorious elevens even though it was well understood that he was the author of several scientific text-books, and that his aim in life was somewhat beyond - I shall not say above - the perpetuation of football technique, and of football generalship. Instances of this sort of thing might well be multiplied, and doubtless the average small college and preparatory school will be able to cite cases to the heart's desire of him who does not find instruction in mathematics or the classics and football irreconcilable; but enough has been said, I think, to prove the seriousness, the need, and the natural urge for the game.

To those already enamored of the most fascinating fall pastime to be found in any country, nothing can be added to the charm of the big game - the journey to the field (not the least of its attractions); the spontaneous if from the undergraduate point of view, organized enthusiasm; the exuberant or otherwise return; and the never-ending "post-mortem" when all is over for the season. Those of us who have looked upon football of the 'varsity caliber from the outside in these years of specialism have been much maligned in the public prints. It is said of us that we get nothing out of the game. It has been said of us that we only stand and wait, without serving, and that too often unintelligent!y, when we ourselves well might be afield. Yet how many of us attend when something less worthy is before us! How many of us attend upon pageants less innocent; less expressive of the things that are nearest to our native innocence as Americans !

I would absolve the spectator at the great football games of the crime charged against him; I would absolve the players of the charges against them - that they butcher one another to make an American holiday; and I would absolve the college, the university and the school, from the charge that they pervert the character-building of the class room to the primordial strife of the football field. It is no longer primordial, this pigskin battle, for the old order with its premium on individual like and mislike in sport has given way to the new order of organized effort, and the end is not yet. Only, at least so far as football is concerned, I am sure that the result has militated for the good of the community.

Excess of publicity, it is true, from time to time has worked its ills with the stars of the cross-barred field, but those of us who weigh football by the standards of "stars" alone are no true lovers of the game, and forget that for every man upon the field wearing the 'varsity letter, probably three have learned the game of games and have reaped from it the harvest that will make of them in years to come the intelligent, sportsmanlike spectators at big games, the wise fathers and brothers of the schoolboys and collegians that are the cornerstone of the greatest of games. One thing is sure, that if Americans did not approve - and that enthusiastically - of the game and its players, it could not exist another season. The game, I believe, will live, and will expand, and the needs of the most virile of the American people, both bodily and mentally, will be met by it.

What sort of young man has the game produced? We know what has become of the old-timers, for they are easily traceable, and an impressive percentage of them has made honorable records. The younger players are so often swallowed up in the obscurity of business life that they become lost to view, so far as their athletic prowess is concerned - and nothing finer could be said of them. What better line on the football man of the last decade could be J gained than the information that he has not been heard of in athletics since he left the university!

It was Wellington, was it not, who said that the battle of Waterloo had been won on the cricket fields of Eton, and it might well be prophesied of our next war that it will be won on the football fields of our schools and universities. What has been worth while for the British Isles may well be worth while for us. You who peruse these lines ask who among your friends is an old football player, and mark well what manner of man he is.