P.1--Whatever else man may be, he belongs primarily to the animal kingdom. As the flower from its root in the soil develops and unfolds all its beauty and fills the atmosphere with its fragrance, so do all the intelligence of man and his moral and intellectual accomplishments depend upon his physical existence.

Soundness of mind, which is the basis of intellectual vigor--that is, of real art, science, philology, and ethics--depends upon the health of the body.

The Greeks were the first people who generally acknowledged the importance of a healthy body. And so great was their devotion to health that a statue of the goddess Hygeia, Health, was erected in Athens four hundred years before Christ.

In ancient Greece the human body reached its highest perfection. We can assuredly say that the eleven thousand Greeks who stormed the barbaric hordes of the Persians at the battle of Marathon were the most perfect manifestations of humanity that our planed has ever seen. It was therefore no miracle that they defeated the Persians, one Greek to twenty barbarians. Every Greek had the purest and healthiest of blood, which developed him into a real man before whom the Medes fell like ears of corn before a tornado. Every one had muscles of iron and hands and feet as strong as a lion's claws. But the Greeks, as we all know, did not neglect the development of the mind. They used to say, "Healthy mind in Healthy body." And that accounts for their pre-eminence and for their superiority, recorded in history, in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. Greece at that time was a country of athletes, and the Greek people considered gymnastics part of their education just as much as letters, music, and mathematics. In the eyes of the Greeks the body was something sacred. They had a high reverence for beauty. When a Grecian woman became a mother, her highest aspiration was to bring forth children of the utmost beauty and shapeliness. The best-trained nurses were brought to Athens from everywhere to take care of the 3growing generation. When Phryne, whose beauty was equal to that of the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, was brought before the bar of justice, the judges unanimously decided in her favor. One historian says, "The Greeks, the distinguished pioneers who built the Parthenon, the immortal sculptors, the dramatists, the statesmen, the rhetoricians, were the product of healthiness of mind and of body. With the fall of Greece the world sank into darkness."

The world as well as modern Greeks must bear in mind that the axiom of the ancient Greeks, "Healthy mind in healthy body," is not only physiologically correct and indisputable but is also religiously sound. The mind, which is divine, in order to function properly and reveal the divinity of its origin must of necessity operate in a healthy physical organism.

Those members of the Greek community in Chicago who recently formed the first Greek Athletic Club here are to be congratulated and highly esteemed. The Greeks of Chicago, as chips of the old block, should not under their present favorable circumstances underestimate the importance of gymnastics. Favorable circumstances they are, for American Greeks live in the greatest 4country in the world, a country which in days to come will outshine every glory of the past and lead the world to new heights in the development of manhood.

This new club of the Greeks in years to come, when the Greek-American generation flourishes, will be proud of its name, for the chips of the old block, nourished and cultivated in American environment, will become the highest type of Americanism. The membership of the club is increasing so rapidly that the original plans must give way to new ones. The management and the members have the respect and the support of the whole Chicago Greek community.

The above article is printed specifically for Greek parents, who are urged by this paper to take advantage of favorable circumstances and present to the community children of greater beauty, symmetry, and mental endowment.