their judgments or more liberal in their giving.  We must carefully limit the claims we make, and then we shall find that we have surer grounds to go on.  What virtues can we reasonably suppose to be developed by games?  First I should put physical courage.  It certainly requires courage to collar a fast and heavy opponent at football, to fall on the ball at the feet of a charging pack or to stand up to fast bowling on a bumpy wicket.  Schoolboy opinion is rightly intolerant of a “funk,” and we should not attach too small a value to this first of the manly virtues.  Considering as we must the virtues which we are to develop in a nation, we realise that for the security of the nation courage in her young men is indispensable.  That it has been bred in the sons of England is attested by the fields of Flanders and the beaches of Gallipoli.  We shall therefore give no heed to those who decry the danger of some schoolboy games.  For we shall remember that just as few things that are worth gaining can be won without toil, so there are some things which can only be won by taking risks.  Few things are less attractive in a boy than the habit of playing for safety; in the old prudence is natural and perhaps admirable, in the young it is precocious and unlovely.  But we need not introduce unnecessary risk by the matching of boys of unequal size and age.  The practice, for example, of house games in which the boys of one house play together, without regard to size or skill, is very much inferior to an organisation of games by means of “sets,” graded solely by the proficiency which boys have shown.  In each set boys are matched with others whose skill approximates to their own; they are not overpowered by the strength of older boys and can get the proper enjoyment from the display of such skill as they possess.

And as we desire our games to foster the spirit that faces danger, so we shall wish them to foster the spirit that faces hardship, the spirit of endurance.  That is why I think that golf and lawn tennis are not fit school games; they are not painful enough.  I am afraid we ought on the same ground to let racquets go, though for training in alertness and sheer skill, in the nice harmony of eye and hand racquets has no equal.  But cricket, football, hockey, fives can all be painful enough; often victory is only to be won by a clinching of the teeth and the sternest resolve to “stick to it” in face of exhaustion.  This is the merit of two forms of athletics which have been oftenest the subject of attack, rowing and running.  Both of course should be carefully watched by the school doctor; for both careful training is necessary.  But a sport which encourages boys to deny themselves luxuries, to scorn ease, to conquer bodily weariness by the exercise of the will, is not one which should be banished because for some the spirit has triumphed to the hurt of the flesh.  In a self-indulgent age when sometimes it has seemed that the gibe of our enemies is true, that the most characteristic English word is “comfort,” it is good to retain in our schools some forms of activity in which comfort is never considered at all.  The Ithaca which was [Greek:  hagathe koyrotrophos] was also [Greek:  trecheia].