Is the American people a nation of lookers on?

Consider: We do not play baseball; we go and look on while others play for us.

Our boys and girls who once played riotous games in the streets and vacant lots now sit quietly watching a movie.

In church we employ elaborate chairs and expensive choruses, and then we sit and listen instead of singing.

Few of our young people are studying the piano or taking vocal lessons these days. It is so much easier to wind up the talking machine or pump the automatic piano.

But the only form of mass activity still participated in by the people themselves is dancing.

When will the pendulum begin to swing' the other way? When will the American people become participants in rather than lookers-on?

One move in the right direction is being made in some of the smaller colleges, where a policy of requiring each student to take his exercise in the form of organized games is being tried out.

The little theatre movement, although feeble as yet, is encouraging the production of plays by amateurs.

But apart from these endeavors, we still maintain our inept record as a nation of lookers-on.

Aur automatic civilization is not all gain. Physically, mentally as well as aesthetically we shall be a better and happier people when our sports, our music and our drama engage once more the attention of the multitudes as actual participants in the fields now given over to professionals. Rochester Times Union.