Athletics: Their Use and Abuse The words “athlete”, “athletics”, are Greek. An athlete was, literally, one who “contended for a prize”. The ancient Greeks thought much of athletic contest, and glorified successful athletes. They crowded from all Greece to the Olympic Games, held once every four years. There the chief, and at first the only, event was the “stadium”, or foot-race of two-hundred yards. The winner of the prize for this...

Manners Maketh Man In the 14th century, William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, founded two great educational institutions —New College, Oxford, and the great public school at Winchester. He gave to both the same motto : “Manners maketh Man”. In those days the word “manners” did not mean mere outward behaviour, as it does now, but what we should call good conduct or morality. By his motto the wise Bishop meant...

The Use and Abuse of Strikes Strikes are a natural result of our modern industrial system. They came into fashion in the present age of steam-driven machinery and large factories. The rate of wages, like the prices of goods, was fixed by the law of supply and demand, under a system of free competition. But the competition between master and man, while it might be free, was by no means fair....

Chivalry “Chivalry”, as an ideal of conduct, includes the ideas of courtesy, courage, magnanimity and honour. Chivalrous conduct is the sort of conduct we expect from a true gentleman. As one writer puts it : “The only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve woman-kind, regardless of age, rank or colour.” It is a noble ideal of character...

Man’s use of the Forces of Nature Man, as an animal, is much weaker than many other animals. He has not the strength of the elephant, nor the speed of the horse. But he has a mind such as no other animal has ; and it is by his superior intelligence that he has learnt to catch and tame and use for his own ends such great natural forces as wind,...

The Uses of History History has been called “race-memory”. Just as a man’s memory links his past life to the present, so the history of a nation is its memory of its past. How could we live as individuals without memory ? There have been strange cases of complete loss of memory. A man has suddenly forgotten his name and who he is. His past life has become an absolute blank...

An Indian Village Villages are all alike in India. A visit to a typical village gives a complete picture of the rural life in our country. Atypical Indian village is not a model of cleanliness, beauty and comfort. On the other hand, it consists of huts having dark and dingy rooms without any ventilation. Pucca houses are rare. The huts are narrow and littered with rubbish and filth. There is no...

Moral Courage A dictionary definition of “Moral Courage” is : “Courage to encounter odium, contempt, etc., rather than abandon a right course.” There is a good example of it in that old school story, “Tom Brown’s School Days.”, about the famous Rugby Public School. When the boys were going to bed in their dormitory, a new boy, little Arthur, knelt down at his bedside to say his prayers. The older boys...