physical training and their meager accomplishments as a preliminary
survey looking to a change in our procedure. We seem to have delegated
scientific physical training to athletics and pugilism, with but scant
concern for our people as a whole. If pink-tea calisthenics as practiced
mildly in our schools has failed to produce robust bodies, then it is
incumbent upon us to adopt a régime of beefsteak. What the traditional
school has failed to do the vitalized school must attempt to do or
suffer the humiliation of striking its colors. There is no middle
course; it must either win a victory or admit defeat in common with the
traditional school. The standard is high, of course, but every standard
of the vitalized school is and ought to be high.

=Cigarettes.=--If the use of cigarettes is devitalizing our boys, and
this can be determined, then the manufacture and sale must be prohibited
unless our legislative bodies would plead guilty to the charge of
impotence. But we are told that public sentiment conditions the
enactment of laws. If such be the case, then the school and its
auxiliaries should feel it a duty to generate public sentiment. If
cigarettes are harmful, then they should be banished, and the task is
not an impossible one by any means. As to the injurious effects of
cigarettes, as distinguished an authority as Thomas A. Edison says the
following:

"The injurious agent in cigarettes comes principally from the
burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called
'acrolein.' It has a violent action on the nerve centers,
producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite
rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics, this degeneration is
permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes
cigarettes."