The training of the mother tongue can be made very effective by means of games:  in the days when children’s parties were simple, and family life was united, language games in the long dark evenings gave to many a grip of words and expressions.  Children learnt to describe accurately, to be very fastidious in choice of words, to ask direct questions, to give verbal form to thought, all through the stress of such games—­Man and his Shadow, Clumps, Subject and Object, Russian Scandal, the Minister’s Cat, I see a Light, Charades, and acting of all kinds.  No number of picture talks, oral compositions, or observations can compete in real value with these games, because behind them was a purpose or need for language that compelled the greatest efforts.

Physical development and its adjustment to mental control owes its greatest stimulus to games.  When physical strength, speed, or nimble adjustability is the pivot upon which the game depends, special muscles are made subservient to will:  behind the game there is the stimulus of strong emotion, and here is the greatest factor in establishing permanent associations between body and mind; psychologists see in many of these games of physical activity the evolution of the race:  drill pure and simple has its place partly in the same sense as “practice” in number or handwork, and partly as a corrective to our fallacious system of education by listening, instead of by activity:  and we cannot in a lifetime acquire the powers of the race except by concentrated practice.  But no amount of drill can give the all-round experience necessary for physical readiness for an emergency, physical and mental power to endure, active co-operation, where self-control holds in check ambitious personal impulses:  and no drill seems to give grace and beauty of motion that the natural activity of dancing can give.  It is through the games that British children inherit, and by means of which they have unconsciously rehearsed many of the situations of life, that they have been able to take their place readily in the life of the nation and even to help to save it.  Again, as in other directions, children must be made to play the game in its thoroughness, for a well-played game gives the right balance to the activities:  drill is more specialised, and has specialisation for its end:  a game calls on the whole of an individual:  he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the seventh standard, and nothing will so entirely outrage the children’s feelings as a teacher’s careless arbitration.  In physical games, too, the social side is strongly developed:  leadership, self-effacement and co-operation are more valuable lessons of experience than fluent reading or neat writing or accurate additions:  but they have not