Mr. Walter Camp, for thirty years the moving spirit, organizer, adviser,
and athletic strategist of Yale, was chosen chairman of the Athletic
Department, with the title General Commissioner of Athletics for the
United States Navy.

Taking up his task in midsummer, 1917, three months after declaration of
war by the United States, Mr. Camp at once brought his ability,
experience, and versatility into play in organizing recreational sport
in the navy stations. By this time every naval district was fast filling
with its quota of enlisted men, and the plan of the Navy Department to
place an even hundred thousand men in the stations before the close of
the year was well along toward completion.

Swept from college, counting-room, professional office, and factory,
often from homes of luxury and elegance, to the naval stations, where,
in many cases arrangements to house them were far from complete, the
young men of the navy found themselves surrounded by conditions to which
they pluckily and patiently reconciled themselves, but which could not
do otherwise than provoke restlessness and discomfort.

[Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by International Film
Service_. CAPTAIN'S INSPECTION AT NAVAL TRAINING STATION, NEWPORT, R.I.]

Under these conditions the work of the Navy Commission was particularly
timely and important, and that of Mr. Camp was of conspicuous value
through the physical training and mental stimulus which it provided for
patriotic, yet half homesick young Americans, from whom not only
material comfort and luxury, but entertainment of all kinds, including
recreational sport, had been taken.