capital P and Government with a capital G, even though army and navy orders take precedence, there is one great mistress of all, Dame Nature!  And when she taps a man on the shoulder and says, “Quit!” that man stops; and when he offers the excuse that he has done it out of patriotism and loyalty she merely says:  “I don’t care why you did it, you have finished!” And there is no appeal to Washington from her verdict.

THE BIG PROBLEM

We shall soon hear the call for more men, men to fight and men to support the men who fight.  The game is on.  We are all in it now, either on the field or on the side-lines.  We need to train for it fast and we have no time to waste.  For, after all, it is condition that tells.  It is the man who can stay, who can work at highest efficiency, and who can hold out the longest who is going to be most valuable.  If we save even ten minutes a day in the setting-up exercises, we save, with a hundred thousand men, 16,666 hours daily toward perfecting their other knowledge.  If we can make an able officer or a competent executive last a year longer or even six months under the increased strain, it gives us a year or six months more in which his understudy can gather the necessary experience to take up his task.

[Illustration:  Arm and body work.  This exercise places A handicap on A heavy man]

[Illustration:  Alternate leg-raising]

Millions of our youth are going out to fight, but disease and exhaustion will kill more of them than will the guns of the enemy.  Thousands of men of the best brain-power in this country are going into committee-rooms and conferences every day from nine in the morning till twelve at night to devise better and more efficacious means of stopping the progress of the Hun.  If these men’s brains are of value, and we know they are, then the more clearly they act and the longer they last, the better for the country.

THE NEED FOR A CONDENSED SYSTEM OF CALISTHENICS

The demonstration, with a group of busy business executives and professional men, of the possibility of physical fitness at a small expenditure has been already mentioned.  This idea has spread and many units of the Senior Service Corps have been organized.  The writer’s services were later on drafted into national work.  At the call of the Secretary of the Navy, he was asked to take a position on the Naval Commission to develop athletic sports and games and physical fitness in our men at the various naval stations.  In one week alone requests came from over four hundred communities to establish units of this work among business and professional men.  Finding that it was impossible to answer all these calls, the writer devoted himself personally to a class in Washington, consisting of several Cabinet members, officials of the Federal Reserve Board, and others, and these men profited extremely from the work.  But this should be done on a far larger scale.