Dr. A. B. Van Ormer,

     I had an interesting experience a few years ago, at a Teachers’ Institute, at morning session. It was the custom of that Superintendent to assign certain topics to the principals of some of the schools in the county and to give the first hour of the morning to a discussion of these topics. One of the principals started out with what promised to be a very remarkable extemporaneous talk, but he had not gone very far until he reached into his pocket and took out a paper to assist him in the extemporaneous effort. Now, I will not wait but will take out my paper in the beginning. There is a story told of a certain college faculty issuing a decree requiring of the members of the senior class that they wear gowns of a specified length.

     One day, as he was crossing the campus, one of the professors espied a member of the senior class whose gown was very much too short. He hailed the offending senior, who waited till he was overtaken by his professor. He listened very deferentially to the professor’s words of chastisement, and then said: "You need not worry about this gown, Professor. It’ll be long enough before I get another one". The professor was not sure, but had a vague suspicion that the senior had "put one over on him".

     On the way home, he saw the point of the senior’s joke and resolved to tell the incident to his wife. In the telling of it he made the senior reply, "It’ll be a long time before I get another one". His wife, seeing nothing humorous about the incident, said, "Well, I see nothing funny in that". The professor’s reply was, "I’ll declare to goodness, neither do I now, but it was very funny when he said it to me on the campus".

     Well, if I were to guess the nationality of that professor, I certainly would not guess he was Irish, for if he had been Irish the story would have been embellished and elaborated upon by the time he arrived home and would have lost none of its humor. He might have been English, or perhaps he was a Dutchman. It reminds me of a man, who, when it was 40 degrees below zero, came into a bar-room, all dressed in furs and swinging his arms to keep up the circulation, and walking up to the bar asked for a glass of lemonade. "I am sorry", said the proprietor, "we have no lemonade, but I have a pair of linen pants that I can let you have". One of the by-standers was heard to remark, "Now what do you suppose he would have done with the linen pants?" Anyone who listens to a man with a Van in front of his name, (Van is the sign of a Dutchman), deserves all he gets by way of humor, and to be disappointed if he expects anything in the way of funny stories.

     I want to take a text for this evening, and I am going to ask you if you will be patient with me until we get pretty well on with the talk then I hope to reach the subject which was assigned to the man who was scheduled to speak this evening. Suppose you go to church next Sunday morning and you hear the soprano at the top of her voice singing, "I want a man", "I want a man", and she would run up the gamut and down the gamut repeating, "I want a man", and you would leave the church before you heard her say "sion in the sky", what an unkindness you would do the soprano not waiting until you heard the latter part of the solo.

     I want to take a text. It is the first chapter of Mark Twain’s story of "Tom Sawyer". The boys of twon have planned for a day by the creek side. The sun shone brightly, the birds sang gaily and the flowers were redolent. It was a wonderful Saturday morning. But at the breakfast table Tom’s aunt said, "1 want you to white-wash the fence today, Tom". Tom took the pail of white-wash in one hand and a white-wash brush in the other hand, and the sun lost its brightness, the birds lost their gaiety and the flowers their redolence, because Tom had to work. Tom goes to the fence leans against it and proceeds in a very indifferent sort of way, and is very loath to go to work. After awhile, a colored boy, Sid, employed by Tom’s aunt, comes along. He is on his way to the town pump to fetch a pail of water. Tom tries to induce Sid to take his place at white-washing and let him go to the pump, as this would give him two hours with the boys. One inducement after another was offered, until finally Tom said to Sid, "If you will do this, I will show you my sore toe", and Sid agreed. There are some who say that every man has his price, but that is not so, there are men who cannot be bought and who will not sell. But Sid was willing to sell, and Tom is engaged in untying the toe when his aunt comes along and Tom goes back to his white-washing. Then Tom continues with his forced task, when a playmate, representing himself as the steamship "The Big Missouri", the mate and the crew, draws up alongside the curb, throws out the gang plank and steps off. Tom becomes very much interested in his work. The playmate says to Tom, "You have to work today, don’t you?" Tom pays no attention to the taunt. "I say, Tom you have to work today, don’t you ?" "You don’t call this work, do you", says Tom. Then the playmate offers Tom an inducement to let him take a turn at white-washing, saying; "I will give you the core of my apple if you will let me white-wash". Tom answers, "No, my Aunt is very particular about this white-washing and would not want you to do it". Part of this is true. "She wants me to white-wash the fence." That is all true. "Say, Tom, I will give you all the apple if you will let me white-wash." "Well, if you be real careful", and Tom takes the apple. Then one after another of Tom’s friends come along and offer him various trinkets for the privilege of a turn at white-washing. One has a dead rat on a string, and another has a bit of burnt or smoked glass with which to look at the sun, and so on. Each take a turn at the white-washing until the fence is white-washed three times, and a streak was put around the fence on the ground. There is no telling what else these boys would have done if the supply of lime had not given out. Now, the point is this: The man or woman who reads Mark Twain simply as a humorist is going to miss a lot. Here and there between the lines he shoots out a rare bit of philosophy. The point from this white-washing picture is this. When a fellow does a thing because he must, it is work; when he does a thing because he wants to do it, it is play. But that is not humorous; that goes to the very heart of your job and my job. Whether we are working or playing at the thing that we have to do day by day depends not on the thing we are doing but depends on us. The difference between work and play is the difference within us. Someone has said, "When we work we do just what we are compelled to do, but when we play we play with an abandonment of energy." We give all the energy we have to the doing of the thing we like to do. The difference between work and play is not in the thing that is being done, it is in the spirit with which we do it, it is in the morale, and that is the subjective thing, never the objective thing that is being done; it is in the personnel in the group of people who are doing the things. When we do a thing because we must, it is work; when we want to do it, it is play.

     In an address before the Religious Educational Association, perhaps fifteen or more years ago, the late Dr. Luther Gulick, in charge of physical education in the Public Schools of New York City at the time of his death, told the following from his experience. Dr. Gulick went into the machine shop of the Pratt Institute, one day, and found a recently completed instrument lying on the work bench, and put three questions to the man who made it. The first question was "How closely do the parts of this instrument fit?" The young man replied that he did not know because they had no gauge to measure closer than one one-thousandth of an inch, and these parts fit more closely than that. "Is it necessary for these parts to fit more closely than that was the second question. And the answer was, "No". The third question was, "Then, why did you make them fit so closely?". No word, just a look of utter disgust and contempt for the man who would dare to come into his work room and put such a question to him, because when this man made this instrument he was not working with one ear listening for the sound of the gong or one eye on the clock. It is the difference between work and play. When we do a thing because we must it is work, while if we are doing it just because we want to do it, it is play. When we do a thing and lose ourselves in the doing of the thing for the joy that comes to us in the doing of the thing, then the doing of that thing is to us play, real, genuine play, with all the thrill and all the joy that comes from the thoroughly good and genuine playing of the game.

     A story is told of an English regiment in the formation, which will never more be adopted should there be another war, namely the old English hollow square formation, which gave the enemy a chance to shoot at them from three sides. The regiment was rapidly being decimated. Man after man was being killed ; officers, one, after another, had been picked off, until there was no ranking man in the regiment left, no man who in a military sense had a right to take command of the regiment. Now, it happened that there were a number of Rugby men in this English regiment. Have you heard anyone say that in connection with the great World War, at the very beginning, when England began to send her forces over the channel, she practically emptied her universities? In this regiment there were a number of Rugby men. It happened that not long before, on the Rugby Athletic Field a rugby football team was being worsted by its opponents. One man had yielded and in his yielding a second man had yielded, and when these two had yielded the morale of the team went to smash, and the opponents were picking up point after point on the rugby team until the first half of the game came to an end as a fortunate relief from the humiliating succession of lost points to Rugby men. During the break in the game the captain of the team watched for the opportunity and brought himself close to the man who had yielded first and whose yielding brought about the disintegration of the morale of the whole team. The captain found this man who was the first to waver, put a hand on his shoulder, and in a confident tone said to him, "Play up, play up; play the game". When the whistle sounded for the second half, the Rugby team went out to the field, a new spirit possessing the man who had wavered in the first half, and the man who had weakened in the first half because the key-man had weakened caught the spirit of the key-man, and point after point they began winning back the game until the score stood at tie, and then came the winning score. From that time it became a tradition at Rugby, if a team were wavering, the students would not wait until the first half was over for the captain to say, "Play up, play the game", but the men on the bleachers would call out, "Play the game, play the game". There were Rugby men in this regiment. There was no man who by right of his position dared to take command, but one fellow caught an inspiration and cried out, "Play up, play the game". And, wherever there was a Rugby man, that call, that cry, that slogan, that challenge of the athletic field was a challenge to play at warfare with the same amount of energy that they would have given had they been on the athletic field and every Rugby man rallied and when the Rugby men rallied every man rallied with them and the morale came back and victory came and perched on the regiment’s colors. The secret was they were giving all the energy that they had, whereas formerly they were giving just what they felt they had to give. It is the difference between work and play ; the difference between success and failure in individual life, in team life, in national life. It is the difference between the German men on the firing lines with officers behind them with revolvers, threatening their lives if they wavered, and our own brave men going over the top with Old Glory, singing as they went over to fight the great battle of civilization. And the nations have since never gotten together to preserve what was really made possible.

     Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in her great poem of the World War, entitled "The World’s Stupendous Hour", which poem was written in the midst of the war, shows the emptiness of wealth and pleasure in the supreme moment. It is a wonderful poem, showing how every hour has two halves. That great struggle was the first half. We are living, now, in the second half, and it is for us to determine in the second half whether those who bore the colors in the conflict died in vain. God help us to determine that they shall not have suffered and died in vain. Play up, play the game. Your’s, railroad men, is a wonderful game. Civilization rests on your game. Without the game that you men are playing individually now civilization will be an impossibility. We can’t go back one-hundred and fifty or two-hundred years and do as they did then, when your occupation was an unknown, undreamed of thing. That day is gone. It is a wonderful game. Human lives are in your hands. Human interests are in your hands. Transportation wraps itself inseparably with the problems of economics, with socialogical problems, with political, religious and moral problems. Oh, what a game it is that you are playing! What service you are rendering to your fellowmen! You are rendering a fine, a wonderful, a necessary service, and as such you have a right to magnify the work that you are doing. You have a right to so magnify your work that, magnifying it rightly you might feel that you are playing a game, a great, dignified, significant, necessary game, and you have the right to the full measure of joy that goes with the realization of the fact that you individually are having some part in the playing of your great game.

     Each man counts as one. Each man has his own distinctive line of duty to perform. What a wonderfully complicated organization it is. Yet each individual man must play his part of the game and whenever one man will waver in the playing of this game another man will waver and the morale will be lost and the service will be lost that society is expecting at your hands and that you are privileged to give.

     Every man counts as one and it is his privilege by the way in which he plays the game, by the way in which he gives his energy, his time, his thought, and his very best, to the accomplishment of his task, to be a help to every other man. Every man has the privilege by this procedure to bring to himself the full measure of joy and happiness form the consciousness of the fact that he has done his work well. This same playing spirit will give you the morale that is needed to make a fine, a wonderful success of the great transportation problem. It is the thing that is needed to give the morale—this spirit of playing the game. You can’t render the service that will give you joy and the nation the full measure of service as long as you will let selfishness enter your work. Self thought, self consideration, self seeking, will break up the morale of your organization. Success to the team, success to the cause depends upon this game playing spirit.

     But did you ever know of a team playing a winninng game that did not play according to the rules? There must be rules for every game and these rules must be made by someone who understands the game, who knows the point to be made. Specialists planned the rules for foot-ball, according to which our universities, colleges and high schools are playing foot-ball this fall. Specialists are working on the rules for the playing of baseball for the coming summer. They understand the game. They are the ones who make the rules and they make the rules in the interest of the game and that which is to be achieved by the game. Just so in your case. You are playing this great transportation game. You have to play according to the rules made by those who know the needs of the whole game, and it is a wide, complex problem that presents itself to them. It is the privilege of every man to enter into the spirit of the game and give his full energy to the doing of the thing, and persons who for any reason whatever will ignore or forget the rules of the game have the right to expect to be penalized for doing so. That is the way the matter goes everywhere. I remember a few Saturdays ago, standing along the side lines on the athletic field and seeing the referee carrying the foot-ball down into the enemies’ field because some of our boys in their play over-stepped the rules of the game, which called for discipline, for penalizing, and that discipline served to give our team a fine morale, so that, last Saturday afternoon, when a team from one of your neighboring colleges, from Susquehanna, came down with the idea of walking off the field with Juniata they did not walk off the field as they expected. But the morale that came into our team and the greater efficiency that came into our team, came because our team was penalized for poor playing early in the season. That was not the kind of playing that we wanted in connection with our institution.

     It is our privilege, if penalty comes to us, to take it in the spirit of game playing. If we have been thoughtless or negligent in any way, let us accept the penalty for a better game the next time, and for a better team in whose interests we are playing. You transportation men are rendering to society at the present time a service without which we could not possibly exist in our present complex civilization. Now, persons who will do this, who will play the game according to the rules of the game, giving of their full energy as best they know how, to bring about success, and when a mistake is made take the penalty of the mistake and improve by the mistake, so that when the next game is played there shall be a larger efficiency so far as the team work is concerned people who are willing to do this are the people who get the largest joy out of playing the game. They are the people who are growing in value to the directors who represent the stockholders of the organization. They are the people who have made mistakes but who in playing the spirit of the game build up the organization instead of disintegrating it. They play the game in the spirit of winning for the cause and not of getting out of it what they can get for themselves.

     Morale and discipline, discipline of the punishment kind, have a certain relation to each other. There are times when some of the latter thing, namely punishment, may be needed. There are times when a good bit of it has been needed with some of us. I remember in my own case, some of it was needed at times. And if we have the right spirit we know there are weaknesses and imperfections in all of us; that no men are perfect except in their own conceit. We are all imperfect. we all make mistakes. A willingness, when we have made a mistake, to remedy that mistake without interfering with the success of the case that employs us, without interfering with the service of the ministry to the community at large, that depends upon us. Discipline, if it be of the punishment kind, can be made beneficial. It is somewhat in accordance with the very remarkable scriptural statement that has reference to tribulations in the world, for tribulations and difficulties and perplexities will come. It is these things that will help us to grow into the larger self. The more morale you have the less discipline you need. The more morale you have the less is the need for discipline. Why not concern ourselves with the morale in our several lines of work, keeping up the spirit with the group for efficiency, giving of the full measurement of our energy for the attainment of efficiency, leaving nothing undone, going beyond the measure of our bond in the service, in the interest of the cause, staying a few minutes over time if it need be. The more morale we have the less will there be need for discipline, but there is discipline of another kind, a discipline in the sense of needed rules for guidance and direction. This spirit of playing the game has characterized successful men in all lines of activities. It is the man who is willing to give of himself unstintedly that superiors are pleased to promote. It is not the man who goes by the terms of the bond constantly. It is the man who is thinking in terms of the welfare of the larger movement rather than in terms of whether or not he can gouge some other fellow out of a place and get the promotion. That is the type of man that superiors are anxious to promote ; that is the type of man that is needed for the performance of the work that is to be done along any line ; that is the type of man who has the larger measure of joy and happiness in doing any line of work. Play the Game. Mark Twain says in the closing chapter of Tom Sawyer that, if we do a thing because we must do that thing, that thing that we do under those conditions is work, and if we do a thing because we want to do it that thing under those conditions is play.

     I have been pleading with you that you shall play the game, claiming that this is the great solvent of the problem of discipline and of the problem of the development of morale. I want to close by going one step further and pleading with you that you shall not be satisfied to play one game. Oh, men, it is possible to play two games at once. It is possible to play the game of transportation and at the same time to play the game of building a life and shaping a character and determining a destiny. Play two games. Build the type of manhood that you shall want to have reached when you shall have traveled to the end of the line and gone into the great terminal of Judgment. It is possible to play two games, and do you know that I have a suspicion that the very best way to play the transportation game, or any other game, is to play thoroughly and intensively this second game? Stop betimes and be still and see if you can feel the touch of the Captain’s hand on your shoulder, and if you can hear the Captain’s voice calling on you to play His game, to play the great game of the moral life with God. Play up ; play the game.

     I have read a story of a railroad wreck that occurred some years ago. The president of the road was on the train. The engine had been overturned. The engineer was pinned beneath the engine. Getting him out was a hopeless thing ; it was just a matter, at best, of a few minutes until life would go. The president of the road knew that engineer personally and when he learned that he was pinned under the engine he hurried up to the engine and looking down he saw the man lying there in his agony and heard the engineer uttering to himself comforts and consolations from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The president of the railroad said, "I would give all that I have if I could say that". "It takes just that ; all that you have", replied the engineer. The man, Jim, was a better engineer because he played the second game. Play up. Play the game.