• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-6591
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 2
• Page Number:
• Date: 12 10 1913
• Tags:
• advice
• opinion
• masculinity

NO USE FOR MOLLYCODDLES Colonel Roosevelt has sent a message to the "Boy Scouts" of America, in which he says: "The boy is not worth anything if he is not efficient. I have no use for mollycoddles. I have no use for timid boys, for the "sissy" type of boy. I want to see a boy able to hold his own and ashamed to flinch. But as one element of this ability to hold his own, I wish to see him contemptuously indifferent to the mean or brutal boy who calls him "sissy" or a mollycoddle because he is clean and decent and considerate to others. If a boy is not fearless and energetic, he is a poor creature: but he is even a poorer creature if he is a bully of smaller boys or girls, if he is guilty of cruel mischief, and if in his own home, and especially in his relations with his own mother and sisters, he is selfish and unfeeling, "I believe in play with all my heart: but I believe in work even more. While a boy or man plays, I want to see him play hard, and when he works I don't want to see him play at all."