for the office is too often little considered if considered at all. Popularity, prominence, availability, and, more than all of these, frequently, manageability are the qualities which bring a man success in the political game in college. The most popular man in college is the successful athlete. Youth, both feminine and masculine, will continue to admire physical beauty and physical accomplishments no matter how vigorously we who are older and more experienced may eulogize intellectual power. The military conflict through which we have passed will not tend to dim the glory of the hero in physical combat, and will intensify this sort of hero worship in the minds of college youths generally.
Though the athlete in college, if he does not neglect his athletic business, is the worst possible candidate for official position or political activity because, on account of the exactions of his sport, he has no time to give to such things, yet, since he is so constantly and so favorably in the public eye, he can with less personal effort be elected to office, and so is frequently tempted through ambition and vanity to make the race. It is a safe conclusion, however, that the athlete in office, whether the position be chairman of the hat committee or president of the Young Men's Christian Association, is there primarily for advertising purposes, and will do little work and do the office little credit. The fact that he is entitled to it, as he so frequently claims, seldom gives him the feeling that he is also under the most serious obligations to fulfill the duties of the office which he has assumed.
Prominence of any sort is almost equally sure to help a man in college toward political success. If
