THE BOMB THROWER

However stunning may have been the effect of the bombshell which M. Geer hurled into the Atlantic City Convention, there is certainly nothing catclysmic in the reactions it arouses nearer home. To any one who has been associated, even in indirectly, with Mr. Geer, his views on school and college athletics appear so sane and logical that any opposition to them seems to reflect a strangely perverted point of view.

The grip in which high schools and colleges have been held by the phantasm of athletic supremacy for the last forty or fifty years is significant of little more than the extremes to which new ideas can be driven. Prior to about 1860 sports were not generally indulged in for the greater glory of Alma Mater. When the value of organized athletics was recognized, however, and the advantages of the element of extramural competition became apparent, the grotesque shapes to which the theory of mons sana in il pore sano was twisted by short sighted enthusiasts seemed to indicate on unreasoning fanaticism. Instead of being directed with the idea of improving the health standard of the average sum of students, sports were seized upon as a means of institutional advertising, and were regarded in themselves as the ultimate goal.

Only within the last few years has the bubble of athletic importance shoed signs of dwindling to proper proportions. Mr. Geer's strength in assisting at this reduction lies in the fact that he has gone to no extremes. He believes thoroughly in the value of the competitive spirit and of inter-institutional games; where he rightly draws the line is at the point where athletics cease to be a means to better standards of physical health, and threaten instead to over shadow and even to undermine the principle of balanced development which is the aim of modern education.