AMERICAN RECREATION 185

of civilization would depend primarily on the
use that was made of leisure. Whether or no
it is permissible for men and women to play the
fool in their leisure when they have very little
to dispose of, leisure on the vast scale now in
prospect could hardly be spent in that way
without disastrous consequences to society at
large. And certainly a type of education which
prepared people only for the short part of life
represented by labour and left them unprepared
for the long part represented by leisure, would
be wholly inadequate to meet the needs of society
under these new conditions.

When I returned to the United States in 1931,
in the midst of economic disaster, I found that
thoughtful Americans everywhere were opening
their eyes to this larger aspect of the leisure
problem. Interest in the question seemed to me
more widely spread than in Great Britain. In
every city I visited were groups of men and
women prepared to consider it as a social problem
of the first magnitude, full of difficulties, and
deeply involved with other problems of econo-
mics, ethics and especially of education.

Nor was the interest confined to the philoso-
phically-minded or highly-educated part of the
community. The people at large seemed to
share it. Wherever my lectures were thrown
open to the public (oftener they took the form of
semi-private conferences with leading citizens^
the announcement that I was to speak on