Rev. Billy Sunday says: It takes strength of mind, body and soul to fight the devil. It's your own fault usually if you haven't the strength of body. Take exercise. Learn to row, swim, wrestle, box and play ball. If every American boy was as husky as Jess Willard or Frank Gotch and would let the cigarettes and booze alone, we would have the devil arrested.
Rev. Christian T. Reisner, Pastor of Grace Methodist Church, New York City, says: - I detest prize fighting and believe it adds to the current war spirit, but I do believe in building a strong, clean body, for it equips one better to fight all kinds of sin. Other things being equal, a sound, well-developed body best furnishes a man to be good for something, and if he is not that, he is good for nothing. "Billy" Sunday stands up under his vigorous work because he has an athletically developed body. Every young person should exercise properly to bring the God made body into its finest usefulness.
Prof. G. L. Meylan, Professor of Physical Education and Medical Director of Columbia University, New York City, says: - The boy or a man who neglects his body is a fool. We can't all be 6 feet, 6 inches tall, but by proper exercise, we can develop our strength of limb and muscle to a surprising degree. Wrestling is one of the best sports in the list. It requires very little in the way of equipment and its benefits are obvious. It develops muscles, agility, courage and moral strength. It enables a man to defend himself against attack and it increases his self-respect. It develops self-control and coolness.
Harry Swoboda, Well-known Wrestler and Physical Culture Expert of Houston, Texas, says: - Most branches of sport and amusement are subject to an aftermath of evil effects, accidents, fatalities and undesirable mental attitudes. Sometimes those effects are elementary and sometimes merely accessory. Upon this distinction depends the advisability of encouraging the particular sport of amusement in question. On the whole, mental attitude inspired by a sport is good, there is little to be feared from the incidental physical, unless they reach appalling proportions, but if mental attitude is bad, the sport or amusement could hardly be excused, even though it involved little or no injurious physical effects. Thus the Oriental dance is severely criticized and condemned by those who recognize its disastrous influence upon the mind, although in some respects it may prove beneficial to the body, and although it holds out little probability of physical injury. Thus wrestling is recommended by the best thinkers and educators of today because of its desirable influence on the mind. It is one of the cleanest sports; it is today one of the leading amusements and physical developers used by most leading colleges and Y. M. C. A.'s in the country.
It is not necessary to be rough in wrestling, that is rough enough to the extent of injuring an opponent. The exercise is strenuous enough to develop the finest kind of manhood, yet it requires splendid skill and careful study and work, rather than strength alone. Man cannot wrestle and be a sluggish thinker. He must think quick and decide quick; his brain must be active. Man is so constituted that he demands play, sport, amusement, trials of strength and skill, which do not involve the more serious side of life. That those sports and amusements should be selected and determined with reference to the mind rather than to the body is too apparent to require vindication, for when all is said and done the tone of civilization and the development of the body depend upon the mind.
Wrestling is strenuous, but clean; and its fundamental ideals are of open, honest competition. It teaches fair play and inspires an abhorrence of underground methods. It teaches self-reliance and self-confidence. It breeds men to look each other straight in the eye and take their medicine without whimpering. It makes for strength of mind and virility of body. Such a sport as wrestling is as essential in forming a man's character as the study of mathematics or English literature.