Play fair

Preface

It is a very pleasant duty to express my gratitude and deep appreciation to Dr. Ernest Laplace, the Rev, Dr. William E. Degnan, the Rev. John F. White, and the Rev. Bro. Denis Edward, E.S.C., and his former colleagues of St. John’s College, Washington, who have helped me in many sections of the present volume; to my esteemed friend, Dr. John A. Lapp, upon whose broad knowledge and clear judgment in the field of civics I have largely drawn through personal confer¬ ences and through his published works; and in special manner to my friend and colleague, the Rev. Leo L. McVay of the Catholic LTniversity, for many hours out of a busy life and for a long list of invaluable criticisms and constructive suggestions generously and unselfishly given me.

I am also greatly indebted to the Vechten Waring Co. for permission graciously granted to quote in chap¬ ter one from Col. Shields’ The Blanket Indian of the Northwest, and to the Macmillan Company for leave courteously given to quote in chapter twenty-five from McClintock’s The Old North Trail. I should like, too, to renew here the acknowledgments made in the text for the many courtesies extended me in the matter of photos for illustrations by a number of the federal departments and branches thereof, by many private organizations, and by generous friends.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Your Age, Weight, and Height. 1

II. The Greatest Leader Who Ever Lived. 11

Chapter I

“Do you mean to tell me that a man can run a hundred miles in twenty-four hours, on snowshoes, and another hundred in the next twenty-four hours, and another hundred in the next?”

“I did it.”

It was the famous Sioux chief, Rain-in-the-Face, who answered. His name may make us smile, and some things in his war record may make us frown. But he could run. He had been trained to long-distance running by his father from early boyhood.

He had killed two white men—in self-defense, he claimed. He fled, was captured, and was locked under guard in a log hut. He escaped at night in the heart of the northern winter and in the midst of a driving blizzard with the temperature 40 below zero. For three days and three nights he ran, without sleeping, without resting even to eat. As he approached his friends’ camp at the end of his 300-mile run, he col¬ lapsed, fell unconscious, and did not come to for fortyeight hours.

Walking and trotting, you can cover about five miles an hour, can’t you? Now, if you followed the Lincoln Highway from New York City to San Francisco, a distance of 3,305 miles, and walked and trotted day and night without stopping, it would take you, at the rate of five miles an hour or 120 miles a day, twenty-seven and a half days to cover the whole distance. Day and night pace for nearly a month would, you will admit, be a little strenuous! You would probably be satisfied

l with four hours’ traveling or twenty miles a clay. Even this is farther than an army on the march goes each day. At this rate of twenty miles a day, if you started from New York on the Fourth of July, you would not get to San Francisco until more than five months later, that is, just a few days before Christmas.

If all the 105,700,000 people in the United States were posted along the same route, there would be a town of more than 6,000 inhabitants for every thousand feet. You would be passing through densely built-up streets every minute of the time. If all the 300,000,000 Catholics in the world were posted likewise, we could not manage at all, for there would have to be a small city of more than 17,000 inhabitants to every thousand feet. Suppose that, instead, we line up our Catholics on both sides of the ocean-to-ocean trail. They would then, standing with shoulder to shoulder, be massed seventeen deep to both your right and your left as you passed along, throughout the whole route. You should have to jump high to get even a glimpse of the green fields beyond them.

You know, of course, of the great Yale Bowd. It will seat nearly 75,000 people for a big football game. To seat all the 300,000,000 Catholics in the world, how many such gigantic bowls would be required ? Seventy-five goes into three hundred four times. Would four bowls be enough? Would forty? Would four hun¬ dred? Or would we need—how many?

* As an American and as a Catholic, you belong to two big things. As an American, you belong to the biggest country in the New World. As a Catholic, you belong to the biggest church in the world. These two things are not only big, but they are growing, awake, alive.

The United States is still young, a boy in years among the great nations but a man in strength. No civilized nation in history has grown as she has grown.

Nearly three centuries rolled by after the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492, before our American republic was born. They were the centuries of the great discoverers and pioneers, and, as you know, many of these pioneers were Catholic

(g) Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.

A FOOTBALL GAME IN THE YALE BOWL

How many such bowls would you need to seat all the people in the United States? All the Catholics in the world?

missionaries. There were Men, with a capital M, hardy, fearless, liberty-loving, men of all nations. Columbus himself, though an Italian, sailed under the flag of Spain. From Spain, and France, and England, and Ireland, and Holland, and Germany, and Sweden came most of these early pioneers and colonists. Some sought gold, some sought liberty. Few found gold, but all found hard work, perils, and in the end liberty. It was an uphill fight and growth was slow at first.

When the Liberty Bell at Philadelphia rang out the good news of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, there were in all the thirteen original colonies,— the number still symbolized in the thirteen stripes of our flag,—only about as many people, 1,850,000, as there are in the single city of Philadelphia to-day. Even a quarter century later, when just a few days before the century died, George Washington passed away at Mount Vernon on the Potomac, there were only about five and a half million people in the whole United States, fewer than are living in the single city of New York to-day.

During the last hundred years, since 1820, we have grown as a nation from less than ten millions to one hundred and five millions, not including more than twelve millions in our possessions in the Philippines, Porto Rico and elsewhere. This growth has largely been due to the great waves of immigration which have swept from Europe to our hospitable shores. During the first seven decades of these hundred years, from 1820 to 1890, by far the majority of the newcomers hailed from northern and western Europe, from Eng¬ land, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. For the last three decades since 1890, a rapidly increasing majority have come to us from central, southern, and eastern Europe, chiefly Italians, Russians, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians, Czecho-Slovaks Jugo-Slavs, with a good sprinkling of folks from the eastern end of the Mediterranean region, and from elsewhere.

All have come to accept the freedom and opportunity that America generously offers them. All have brought

NEW AMERICANS AT ELLIS ISLAND

Our American population has grown mainly from the incoming stream of newcomers, young and old, from Europe, who have brought their gifts of brain and muscle to help build our nation

tilings else, young, live, strong, and hardy. All things human, from home-run wizards to world empires, grow old, lose their grip, and die. But she lives on ever robust, ever able to “come back.'’ She has found what Ponce de Leon failed to find, the fountain of youth. Yet not she, but her Founder who lives within her. “I am with you all days even to the consumma¬ tion of the world.”

their gifts of brain and muscle to help build up America. On the coat-of-arms of the United States is the motto: “E Pluribus Unumout of many, one! Out of many States, one Nation. We are also one people blended from many races and tongues. The blood of the races of the world flows through the veins of America.

The Catholic Church is old in years, but young in all

Courtesy of T. V. Potvdorly

Have you ever heard of Father Damien, missionary to the lepers, and martyr too, for he died of the dread

Courtesy of U. 8. Forest Service

“GRIZZLY GIANT”

All living tilings grow old, even giant Sequoias, the oldest living

things in the world disease, the most terrible of all human diseases? In its last stages, the very flesh drops from the fingers of the victims. On Molokai, one of the Hawaiian Islands, the government established a leper settlement. Food and clothing were given the unfortunate victims, but nurses and physicians could not at first be found who would stay with the lepers. Father Damien, a Belgian by birth, eagerly volunteered his services. He arrived in 1873. As priest, he looked after all the religious needs of the lepers, said Mass for them, gave them the sacraments. But he did more. He dressed and bandaged their ulcers. He helped to cheer them up. He lent a hand in building their little cottages. He even dug their graves, made their coffins, and buried them with his own hands. Every day was a perpetual good turn and work of mercy. For fifteen years this, was the life he lived. He kept it up until he died, even during the last three years of his life, after he had caught the loathsome and deadly disease himself.

Who, do you think, is his successor in this far-away Pacific island? An American Catholic ex-army officer, American to the core and Catholic to the point of heroism, Brother Joseph Dutton, still young in all but years. Though so far away from home on his plaguestricken island in the Pacific, and though his duties do not leave him much time for recreation, he reads Amer¬ ican newspapers—when he can get them—with as keen an interest as if he lived in New York City, and, from what I know of him, I think he goes pretty deeply into the news on the sporting page!

Father Damien and Brother Dutton are good ex¬ amples of the Catholic missionary spirit. Today an army of priests, brothers, sisters, and catechists of about 82,000 are engaged in Catholic missionary work. Of course, a few only of them are laboring among lepers. The others are scattered over the globe, from the lands of ice and snow to the dripping jungles of the tropics. All are working in the spirit of Father Damien and Brother Dutton. “How long are you going to stay?” a group of sisters on their way to the missions in the Philippines were asked. “Until we die,” the} 7 answered.

By the way, do you know that the Catholic Church in the United States has within the last several years pushed ahead with lightning speed toward doing its

Courtesy of Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions

ALASKAN MISSIONARY’S EIGHTEEN DOG-POWER FLIVVER

Our Catholic missionaries among the Indians and Eskimo of Alaska travel hundreds of miles yearly by dog-sled

part in foreign missions? During 1921, more than a hundred Catholic missionaries—priests, sisters, and brothers—went forth from the United States to Asia, Africa, Oceanica, and the West Indies to spread the gospel of Christ. Forty-five went to China alone, eight to the Philippines, New Guinea and the Polynesian Isles. One training school for missionaries, Mary knoll on the Hudson River, is crowded to its very limit with nearly three hundred candidates, although it is only ten years old. Yet, a few years ago, people said that American boys were too much interested in making money to offer themselves for carrying the light of faith and service to lands beyond the sea.

By this time, you are perhaps asking: “What have missions to do with the growth of the Church ?” You have answered your own question. It is by missions and missionaries that the Church has grown. Nineteen hundred years ago the Catholic Church began her life. She had just thirteen members to begin with, just as the United States began its life with thirteen states. These members were Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, and the twelve Apostles, the twelve first missionaries chosen by Our Lord Himself when He lived on earth.

A small number, not much larger than your gang or baseball or football team. But the number grew. The early Church spread first around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea within the lifetime of the first missionaries, the Apostles. Thence within five or six centuries she spread out farther like a great fan over parts of Asia and Northern Africa and over the greater part of Europe. Our ancestors in Europe, then mostly uncivilized barbarians, were baptized and they passed on the blessings of faith to succeeding generations, and to us of the twentieth century.

With the opening up of the Orient and the discovery of America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the torch of faith was carried across the Atlantic to our American shores. Most of the Indians of North and South America became Catholic, though many of the missionaries such as Father Brebeuf and Father Jogues suffered martyrdom or worse. In America as elsewhere the* blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church.

Nowhere has the Church grown more rapidly and more remarkably than in the United States. One hundred and twenty years ago, there were only about 36,000 Catholics in the United States. Today there are about 19,000,000, more than five hundred times as many, to say nothing of the additional 10,000,000 Catholics in the United States possessions, especially the Philippine Islands and Porto Rico.

You belong to two big and growing societies. But big numbers are not everything. They are not the most important thing. What do the big numbers stand for and do? This is the most important thing. This little book has been written to help you know what America and the Catholic Church stand for and do, to help you get into the big game yourself, play your part on the team, and win.

Chapter II

Several years ago I saw an odd accident a very short distance from where I am now writing. An open elec¬ tric car was forging its way up a steep hill. I noticed the motorman lean far out to his left to adjust some¬ thing and evidently his head struck a center pole standing between the tracks. While badly stunned, lie kept his feet, though he swayed from side to side as the car approached the terminus of the line fifty yards ahead. Half unconscious, he had lost control of his car. On and on the car came, and at full speed smashed into a terminal pole holding up many wires. * The pole toppled over and crashed down on the car, and in a moment live wires were sizzling in all directions on the ground. Within five seconds after the motorman lost control, the smash came.

You can’t run an electric car without a motorman,' alert, with his hand on the controller. If you should try, the end is a sure smash-up. And you can't run any organization, from a baseball team to a nation, from a gang to a world-wide church, without some one at the steering-gear, without a leader, call him captain, president, or pope. If you should try, your organiza¬ tion would soon smash to bits.

What kind of a leader do we expect and want? I think we should all agree that some of the things we expect in a leader are unselfishness, fairness, courage, resourcefulness, and the knack of winning out and making good.

A square captain of a team plays no favorites. He puts a man in a position as guard or tackle or shortstop on the man’s merits and ability, not because of favorit¬ ism and special liking for him. Every man on the team is treated the same, that is, is assigned to hold down a position in accordance with his ability to make good. Theodore Roosevelt who led the American people for so many years had begun by standing for the square deal in promoting the men under him. AMien he was elected Police Commissioner of New York City, he found promotions largely going by bribery and favoritism, under the direction of corrupt political bosses. He set the policy of giving jobs on merit and merit only.

“The old guard dies. It never surrenders!” This was the motto of Napoleon’s bodyguard. One of the things that had inspired this heroic loyalty was that Napoleon, with all his faults, had the spirit of great leadership and was fair and just and impartial with the soldiers under him. He promoted on merit, not on personal favoritism.

We expect a leader to be on the level, to be fair, to treat squarely all who follow him, to play no favorites, and to give credit where and only where credit is due.

One of the greatest soldier leaders of all time was strangely enough, a woman and a saint, Joan of Arc. When only eighteen years old, she went to the French king, who was a weak, spineless, useless sort of fellow, and volunteered to lead his then broken and beaten army to victory. People laughed at her, at the idea of a mere slip of a country girl leading to victory an army of brawny thugs, bullies and cut-throats, as the hired soldiers of that army were. But clad in her white armor and astride her white charger she won her victory, and laid the foundations of the French nation.

And after she had done all this she asked no reward but to be permitted to return to her village, her home, her folks, and her spinning wheel.

We expect a leader to be loyal to the cause and to work not for rewards for himself, but for love of his men and of his cause. He will ask his followers often to do hard things and to brave dangers and suffering. This is part of the game. But we expect him to be willing to rough it with his followers, to share their sufferings, their struggles, and their sacrifices, and to ask them to do nothing he would be unwilling to do himself.

When most people thought the earth was flat instead of spherical, it took courage to sail straight across the unknown and uncharted Atlantic. Who knew but at the edge of the flat ocean, you would fall off into space, as a canoe falls over the brink of a waterfall. Colum¬ bus and the men who sailed with him were brave men. But when the days and weeks passed and still no land hove in sight, the courage of even the bravest began to fail—the courage of all but one, Columbus himself. And it was his courage and his confidence of victory that carried the crews he led over the days of dis¬ couragement and mutiny to the promised land of the Indies.

We expect a leader to be courageous and brave, and to have confidence and trust and hope and cheerfulness in the outcome of his cause. No football team wants a captain who gets cold feet on the eve of the big game of the season.

Nor does any team want to work under a coach who does not know his business. Would you? Or how would you like to go out for a year’s camping trip into the Rockies or into Alaska under the leadership of a

(g) Underwood and Underwood, N. T.

THE GREATEST AMERICAN LEADER

Can you read character in faces? What qualities of a leader can you

read in this face?

man who had never been outside his own city ward and who w r ould not know how to make a fire in wet weather? One reason why our men worked and fought so successfully under leaders like Pershing, Benson and Foch in the late war was their full confidence in the resourcefulness and ability of their leaders. Benson and Foch, by the way, are, as you probably know, very practical and loyal Catholics.

We expect a leader to be resourceful, to know his work, to be keen, awake, alert, far-sighted, a man who can plan intelligently on a large scale.

Washington at Valley Forge in 1777, and Washington at Yorktown in 1781! What a contrast! The men of the ragged army at Valley Forge sometimes for a week at a time had nothing to eat but frozen potatoes. Some¬ times they were obliged to sleep by turns on the frozen ground as there were not enough blankets to go round. While some slept, the others crowded around the campfires. Scarcely a man escaped being frostbitten, and many a foot and leg froze black and had to be amputated. In the midwinter nearly one-fifth of the men were without shoes. Nearly a third or fourth of the men died before the winter was over. And worst of all perhaps, patriotism among the comfortable civilian population was almost dead. Who but a leader like Washington could have kept together this shattered and tattered remnant and out of it built the army that at last triumphed and won for us Americans independence and liberty?

We expect a leader to get results, to dare great things, to take risks, to achieve, to win, to snatch victory out of the very jaws of defeat.

History has known many leaders in war and peace. Some leaders have been far-famed for fair play, some for loyalty and unselfishness, some for brains and re¬ sourcefulness, some for daring and courage, some for their genius in turning defeat into victory. There is one Leader and only one who combines all these things in the supreme degree. And that Leader is your leader and mine, our ever fair, unselfish, resourceful, courage¬ ous and victorious Leader, the divine Son of God, Jesus Christ.

On the sky line of history loom up the magic figures of great leaders and empire builders, Alexander the Great, Augustus, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Na¬ poleon. But where are their empires now? And who to-day follows their leadership, or even stops to do their memories reverence?

Even were we to view from the merely human stand¬ point, as did the non-Catholic historian, Macaulay, the vast empire planned and built by your great Leader and mine, can any human empire compare with it? Read what Macaulay wrote:

“There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when cameleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian am¬ phitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nine¬ teenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable.

The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and useful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest end of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still con¬ fronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age.

“Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and re¬ spected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian elo¬ quence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.”

What leader but yours and mine could have had the courage to dare, the genius to plan, and the power to carry to victory the world-wide, ever-enduring, ever¬ growing, invincible Catholic Church?

When He lived among us, He braved enraged mobs and mighty and treacherous rulers, with never a quiver of fear. Boldly and intrepidly He defied bodily threats and peril of death in the cause of truth and kindliness and principle. He faced death, and died for loyalty to a principle, loyalty to the truth He teaches us, and loyalty to the love He bears each one of us.

It seemed for a brief three days after His death on the cross that His clever, wily, underhand, powerful enemies had finally won out. So they thought, Caiaphas, Pilate, and the rest of that cowardly crew. To make doubly sure, after the great round stone had

(g) Scenic America Company, Portland, Oreg, Courtesy ot National Park Service

A ROCKY ASCENT

“Sometimes He takes us on steep climbs up rough trails”

been rolled across the door of the tomb cut in the solid rock of the hillside, they sealed the stone and set a guard of heavily armed soldiers on watch day and night. “Now, at last we have fixed Him,” they thought. But how easily they were outwitted, soldiers and all of them.

Victory! A victory more glorious than human imagination could have fancied, victory over death itself and over those who had planned and schemed His death, broke like the sun after a storm on that first Easter morn. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” spoke the Angel of the Resurrection to Mary Magdalen and the other Mary. “ He is risen, He is not here, behold the place where they laid Him.”

He is our supreme Commander, our great Leader, living, kindly, fair, courageous, resourceful, victorious. Sometimes He takes us on steep climbs up rough trails. Sometimes He asks us to do things and to shoulder re¬ sponsibilities that put our mettle, our manhood, our courage, and our loyalty to the test. Rut He is a Leader who never asks us to do what He has not done, to bear what He has not borne, to go where He has not gone. At the end of the long trail, we shall perhaps be a little tired, but we shall laugh over and forget the sweating work of the day when the night of death comes, and we pitch our Last Camp.

Chapter III

Do you know the story of John R. Kissinger and John J. Moran? Everyday names, but not everyday men. They are two American men worth knowing. Both happened to be in Cuba after the Spanish-American war of 1898, Kissinger as a private in the Army Hospital Corps, Moran as a civilian employe.

If today, the dreaded yellow fever or Yellow Jack is practically a thing of the past, we may largely thank the cool heroism of these two men, and the brave and untiring researches carried out under conditions of grave danger by a small group of our American army surgeons, under the immediate leadership of Major Walter Reed.

Yellow Jack has been one of the most terrible scourges of the American continent. At Philadelphia, for in¬ stance, in 1793, one-tenth of the whole population died of it. In 1878, another epidemic which spread to a great number of cities, carried off nearly 16,000 people. The disease strikes silently and quickly. The skin turns yellow, the temperature rises rapidly, delirium sets in and death, occurring in some epidemics in four out of every five cases, soon puts an end to the victim’s agony.

Great mystery shrouded for centuries the cause of the disease. It remained for the little group of four American Army surgeons, headed by Major Walter Reed—one of America’s greatest men—to do the scientific detective work that finally proved the mos¬ quito to be the carrier of the disease, to be the villain in the case.

These men started their studies in and near Havana in June, 1900. In the course of their dangerous work, two of the group, Dr. Carroll and Dr. Lazear caught the fever. Dr. Carroll recovered, but Dr. Lazear died. Before the fall of 1900, it had become pretty clear that the mosquito was the guilty party. But a test had to be made to make sure.

Kissinger and Moran volunteered their services in the cause. They let themselves be bitten by mos¬ quitoes that had sucked the blood of yellow fever patients. Both were stricken with the disease. Happily, both recovered, and, the last I heard, were still living. War on the mosquito was declared. Breeding pools were filled or covered with a film of mosquito oil. Yellow jack disappeared, and, let us hope, for good.