I stood one day on the campus of a Christian college in a Latin republic. The young men were playing baseball, and they were playing it well. I discovered that baseball was a regular part of their curriculum, that they were required to play so many games per week, and that they received credit for the games, provided they were played according to rules. When I inquired as to the reason for this I was informed by the efficient director of the school that baseball was in his opinion one of the most important subjects in the course. "There are two things that we can teach through baseball better than any other way. One is team work—a fellow can't play the game alone; and the other is the art of accepting defeat gracefully. Half of the boys must be defeated every day, which is an invaluable drill for them."
THE TOWN PUMP, INTERIOR VILLAGE
Even as we discussed the matter, a tall fellow got into a dispute with the umpire, and after a dramatic flourish swung his arms in the air and shouted, "No juego mas" ("I will play no more").
"There—do you hear that?" remarked the director. "That is what we are trying to cure."
As far as my observation has gone, nobody except the educational missionary is trying very hard to cure this most unfortunate trait in an otherwise very fine character.
WAYSIDE CEMETERY IN THE JUNGLE
Here, again, it is not difficult to trace this stream to its sources. We understand much better since 1914 whence came this political peculiarity. The ideals of European politics have been transferred across the Atlantic and their fruits on foreign soil have not been tempered by the vigor of free institutions grown strong in the processes of centuries. If Central-American republics are only constitutional monarchies in which the monarch governs the constitution, there is very good reason for the anomaly. If it is true that there is not a single republic on American soil south of "the line," then it is to be said that there never can be such a republic until Latin-America ceases to think in terms of European history and Jesuitism is broken from its hold on the moral consciousness of the men who make and unmake republics in the Latin world. Successful republics have been developed in that turbulent but onmoving stream of Western and modern ideals that has found its most complete expression in the United States, but which has also tinctured the thinking and influenced the political processes of practically every country on earth except Prussia. We ourselves are not perfect yet, and it behooves us to withhold the stones from our neighbors until we can show a clean record. We will have some distance to go before democracy is a finished product, and it will be a good plan to take the neighbors along with us.