that I have derived more pleasure from football than from any other form of exercise.  I have climbed some mountains, and am even a member of the Alpine Club; I may add that I am a keen, though not a skilful, sportsman, and am indeed rather a martyr to exercise and open air.  I make these confessions simply to show that I do not approach the subject from the point of view of a sedentary person but indeed rather the reverse.  No weather appears to me to be too bad to go out in, and I do not suppose there are a dozen days in the year in which I do not contrive to get exercise.

But exercise in the open air is one thing, and games are quite another.  It seems to me that when a man has reached an age of discretion, he ought no longer to need the stimulus of competition, the desire to hit or kick balls about, the wish to do such things better than other people.  It seems to me that the elaborate organization of athletics is a really rather serious thing, because it makes people unable to get on without some species of excitement.  I was staying the other day at a quiet house in the country, where there was nothing particular to do; there was not, strange to say, even a golf course within reach.  There came to stay there for a few days an eminent golfer, who fell into a condition of really pitiable dejection.  The idea of taking a walk or riding a bicycle was insupportable to him; and I think he never left the house except for a rueful stroll in the garden.  When I was a schoolmaster it used to distress me to find how invariably the parents of boys discoursed with earnestness and solemnity about a boy’s games; one was told that a boy was a good field, and really had the makings of an excellent bat; eager inquiries were made as to whether it was possible for the boy to get some professional coaching; in the case of more philosophically inclined parents it generally led on to a statement of the social advantages of being a good cricketer, and often to the expression of a belief that virtue was in some way indissolubly connected with keenness in games.  For one parent who said anything about a boy’s intellectual interests, there were ten whose preoccupation in the boy’s athletics was deep and vital.

It is no wonder that, with all this parental earnestness, boys tended to consider success in games the one paramount object of their lives; it was all knit up with social ambitions, and it was viewed, I do not hesitate to say, as of infinitely more importance than anything else.  I do not mean to say that many of the boys did not consider it important to be good, and did not desire to be conscientious about their work.  But as a practical matter games were what they thought about and talked about, and what aroused genuine enthusiasm.  They were disposed to despise boys who could not play games, however virtuous, kindly, and sensible they might be; an entire lack of conscientiousness, and even grave moral obliquity, were apt to be condoned