Is it unreasonable to expect that what has happened in the Philippine Islands might, by proper education and suggestion, happen elsewhere in the world? Certainly the interest in athletic contests is no slight and transient interest. At the time of a great war we know that news of the games is fully as much demanded as news of the war. Already in the United States, without special stimulation, the number of young men engaged in athletic training is estimated as equal to the number in the standing army. And in England, belief in the efficacy of athletics as a means of promoting hardihood and readiness to face stern hazards has found expression in the phrase that England’s battles have been won on the football fields of Rugby and of Eton. With the further promotion of international contests the influence of competitive sports is likely to increase rather than lessen. Within national boundaries emulation is sure to stimulate extensively such games as will bring forth the best representative athletes that the country can produce. In one of the high-spirited European nations, which made a poor showing at the last Olympic meet, thousands of young men began training for the next meet, under a director imported from the nation that had made the highest records. Training for athletic contests is quite as likely to enure young men to physical hardship and fatigue, is quite as conducive to the development of bodily vigor, the attainment of alertness and skill and the practice of self-restraint, as is army life with its traditional associations and easy license. It may be urged, however, that an essential element is lacking in all this discussion--the sobering possibility that in war the supreme surrender of life itself may be required. Death for one’s country is indeed glorious. But the argument that being killed is desirable has little to commend it. When the strongest and sturdiest are constantly chosen to be fed to the engines of annihilation, the race is more likely to lose greater values than it gains from the spectacle of self-sacrifice, however perfect that may be. Are there not advantages in the conditions of great athletic rivalries that may compensate for war’s most austere demand? The race of hardy men, to secure which the militarists urge war, is much more likely to result from the honoring and preserving of vigorous men in their vigor than it is from the systematic selection of such men to be destroyed in their youth.