young children are more or less individualistic and solitary in many
of their games, but boys and girls alike prefer team games from the
pre-adolescent age up to adult life. It is certain that no form of
exercise is superior to these games: they call into play every muscle
of the body, they make great demands on accuracy of eye and
coordination, they also stimulate and develop habits of command,
obedience, loyalty, and _esprit de corps_. In the great public schools
of England, and in the private schools which look up to them as their
models, team games are played, as one might say, in a religious
spirit. The boy or girl who attempts to take an unfair advantage, or
who habitually plays for his or her own hand, is quickly made to feel
a pariah and an outcast. Among the greatest blessings that are
conveyed to the children of the poorer classes is the instruction not
only in the technique of team games but also in the inoculation of the
spirit in which they ought to be played. It is absolutely necessary
that the highest ideals connected with games should be handed down,
for thus the children who perhaps do not always have the highest
ideals before them in real life may learn through this mimic warfare
how the battle of life must be fought and what are the characters of
mind and body that deserve and ensure success. It has been well said
that those who make the songs of a nation help largely to make its
character, and equally surely those who teach and control the games of
the adolescents are making or marring a national destiny.

Among the means of physical and moral advancement may be claimed
gymnastics. And here, alas, this nation can by no means claim to be
_facile princeps_. Not only have we been relatively slow in adopting
properly systematised exercises, but even to the present day the
majority of elementary schools are without properly fitted gymnasia
and duly qualified teachers. The small and relatively poor